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‘Library of Trinity College, 
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REGNUM DEI 





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THE BAMPTON LECTUR 





eet 8 4 


REGNUM DEI 


EIGHT LECTURES ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT 


BY 


ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON, D.D. 


LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 
HON. LL.D. GLASGOW, HON. D.D. DURHAM 
PRINCIPAL OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON 

EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL 


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SYMB. ECCLES, HIEROSOL,. 


REGNVM ERGO ET IVSTITIA DEI BONVM NOSTRVM EST 
ET HOC APPETENDVM ET IBI FINIS CONSTITVENDVS 
PROPTER QVOD OMNIA FACIAMVS QVAECUNQVE FACIMVS. 


ST. AUGUSTINE 


NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
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| PIAE MEMORTAE 


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_ VENERANDI PRAESVLIS _ 
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QVI OBDORMIVIT IN CHRISTO 
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Sch.R. 
PY Neg V3 
R644 


EXTRACT 


FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 
OF THE LATE 


REV. JOHN BAMPTON, 


CANON OF SALISBURY. 


“T give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the 
Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars. of the University of Oxford 
for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands 
and Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes here- 
inafter mentioned ; that is to say, I will and appoint that the 
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being 
shall take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, 
and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions 
made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of 
eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in 
the said University, and to be performed in the manner 
following : 





“T direct and appoint that upon the first Tuesday in Easter 
Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges 
only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the Printing- 
House, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in 
the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the 
year following, at St. Mary’s in Oxford, between the com- 
mencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of 


the third week in Act Term. 
Vv 


vi EXTRACT 


“Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture 
Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following 
Subjects—to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and 
to confute all heretics and schismatics—upon the Divine 
authority of the Holy Scriptures—upon the authority of the 
writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice 
of the primitive Church—upon the Divinity of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ—upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost— 
upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in 
the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. 

“Also I direct that thirty copies of the eight Divinity 
Lecture Sermons shall be always printed within two months 
after they are preached; and one copy shall be given to the 
Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the head of 
every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the City of Oxford, 
and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the 
expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of 
the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture 
Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor entitled to 
the revenue, before they are printed. 

“Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified 
to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken 
the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Uni- 
versities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same person 
shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice.” 


PRE PAGE 


Certains auteurs parlant de leurs ouvrages disent: Mon livre, mon com- 
mentaire, mon histoire, etc. Ils sentent leurs bourgeois qui on 
pignon sur rue, et toujours un chez moi a la bouche. IIs feraient 
mieux de dire: Notre livre, notre commentaire, notre histoire, 
etc., vu que d’ordinaire il y a plus en cela du bien d’autrui que du 
leur.—PASCAL. 


THE following pages, the result of the writer's reflexion 
with a view to his own guidance in life, must be 
regarded as an enquiry rather than as leading up to 
a predetermined conclusion. They are published in 
the hope that a theme, which has been fruitful of 
instruction to himself, may be not unfruitful, at any 
rate by way of suggestion, to some others. 

So far as the enquiry has led to definite results, 
which I would be understood to hold with diffidence 
and with full consciousness that much is still to be 
learned, those results are briefly as follows. 

The Kingdom of GoD is the Christian answer to the 
most vital question that man has to solve, the question 
of the purpose of his being. Our Saviour’s teaching 
on the subject is closely connected with hopes and 
convictions in full currency at the time of his Advent 
on earth; but he so used these convictions and hopes 
as to give a new meaning to life, and to open a new 
direction to human aspiration and effort. The King- 


dom of GoD in his hands is a many-sided conception ; 
vii 


Viii PREFACE 


to do justice to it has been the problem set to his 
followers in the long and varied course of the Church’s 
existence. 

Between the Church itself and the Kingdom of 
Gop there exists the closest correlation, although 
neither our Lord himself nor his immediate Disciples 
treat the two as strictly identical. In early Christian 
times the Church on earth, as present, was contrasted 
with the Kingdom of GoD as future; either specially 
(as by Tertullian, Irenaeus, etc.), with the Millennial 
reign of Christ on earth, or simply (as by Cyprian and 
others), with the Kingdom of GOD in which the saints 
are to reign in heaven. St. Augustine, without in any 
degree abandoning the latter contrast, added to it a 
deeper conception of the Church, based upon the contrast 
between the phenomenal and the real. He conceived 
the present Church as the Kingdom of Christ in so far 
as it consists of those who are in truth reigning with 
Him, in whose hearts and wills Christ is reigning now. 
These constitute the cévitas Dez, which to Augustine 
consists of GOD’s elect, in contrast to the czuztas terrena, 
which consists of the reprobate. But Augustine also, 
in applying his fundamental view of life to the inter- 
pretation of history, incidentally hinted at a more 
external interpretation of the thought of the Kingdom 
of GOD, namely as embodied in the exercise of divine 
power delegated to human hands in directing the affairs 
of the Church and of mankind. This interpretation, re- 
markably absent from earlier Christian thought, occupies 
in Augustine’s own writings a quite subordinate position; 
none the less it struck the keynote for the most imposing 
attempt in Christian experience to give practical em- 


PREFACE ix 


bodiment to the idea of a Kingdom of GoD on earth, 
namely the theocratic system of the Middle Ages, 
That attempt, so far as it succeeded, succeeded at the 
cost of the more fundamental and spiritual side of 
Augustine’s mind, and of the unity of the Christian 
ideal. For the confusion and conflict which have 
resulted, the remedy must be found in renewed re- 
course to the record of our Lord’s own teaching, 
and in the attempt to apply it in relation to the com- 
plex needs of modern life. In attempting this, the 
lessons of Christian experience must be our principal 
aids; and among these lessons, it will probably be 
found that the Church of to-day has more to learn 
from St. Augustine than from any other ancient inter- 
preter of the mind of Christ and of the Apostolic 
Church. 

That in some respects, as has been apparent from 
the time of Dante, Augustine’s vision was limited, may 
be due to the fact that a low estimate of civil govern- 
ment and of social life was inevitable in the age to 
which he belonged. But his fundamental contention 
that the source of social decay is the love of self, and 
that the love of self can only be effectually overcome 
by the Love of GOD, is as fully borne out by the signs 
of our times as by those of the decline of Ancient 
Rome. 

It has been no part of my purpose to deal with 
controversies relating to Christian doctrine. They 
have been referred to in some cases, but only in so far 
as they have affected the development which is the 
subject of this volume. I have neither concealed, nor 
I hope unduly obtruded, my personal convictions; in 


eae PREFACE 


speaking of individual characters, it has been my 
principle to give them all possible credit for the best 
motives. Even the gravest moral blunders of great 
men are as a rule due to their enthusiasm for some 
cause greater than themselves; zeal for GOD is the 
leaven of life, but none the less it has at times blinded 
men to the complexion of their own acts. 

In a book which is in no sense a compilation, it is 
difficult to do justice to obligations to other writers. 
Those recorded in the notes are far from exhausting 
the very many which are really due; if the genesis 
of the volume has been in the reflexion of some few | 
years, its actual composition has been in the somewhat 
scanty intervals of present duties which leave but 
little time for systematic study. It is inevitable that 
many authorities which have gone to design the 
structure have not been consulted in the course of its 
actual execution. For example, in the first three 
lectures the reader will miss references to many im- 
portant and obvious authorities. The reason partly is 
that in writing them I have worked mainly with the 
biblical text itself, with the object of gaining my final 
impression so far as possible at first hand. But in 
doing so, I am fully aware how illusive in such a case 
is the appearance of a tabula rasa. Lectures VI. and 
VII. have been furnished with somewhat longer notes, 
in order to enable readers who are less at home in the 
subject there dealt with to follow the allusions in the 
text. I hope that historians, if any should read the 
Lectures, will pardon the large amount of obvious 
matter, which is not meant for their instruction. I 
would also apologise for occasionally, especially in the 


PREFACE xi 


Fifth Lecture, referring to what I have written else- 
where. My object in doing so is merely to avoid 
self-repetition. 

Inequality of reference in the notes does not, I fear, 
stand alone among the signs of discontinuous produc- 
tion which I have been unable wholly to remove from 
the book. But were I to begin an apology for its 
shortcomings, the Preface would threaten to be a long 
one. 

My fervent hope and prayer is that, whatever its 
faults, this volume of Lectures may do nothing to 
hinder, but by GOb’s mercy may rather in some 
degree, however slight, set forward the Kingdom of 
Christ and of Gop. I would make my own the 
prayer of one of my predecessors: “Domine Deus, 
quaecunque dixi de tuo, agnoscant et tui; si qua de 
meo, et Tu ignosce et tui.” 


Kine’s COLLEGE, LONDON 
Michaelmas Day, 1901 





BABE OF CONTENTS 


LECTURE I 


INTRODUCTORY. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 
PAGE 
I. The idea of Purpose at the root of the Problem of Life : 3 
The verification of religious conviction reached not so much by 
speculative theism as by the appeal to the religious experience 
of mankind. The Christian Religion the central channel of 
this experience. The Christian conception of purpose summed 
up in the idea of the Kingdom of Gop. Aim of these Lec- 
tures: to interrogate Christian experience as to the meaning 
of the Kingdom of Gop. General plan of the Lectures. 4 
II. Foremost place of the Kingdom of Gop in our Saviour’s teach- 
ing as the summary of his message. [Its relation to the 
expectations of the Jewish People . 8 
III. (2) Roots of the hope of the Kingdom of Gop in the old 
Testament: the ‘‘ Golden Age” of Israel was a future age. 
But this presupposed the thought of Israel itself as a Divine 
Kingdom. This idea primitive: earliest unity of Israel as a 
nation founded on Religion . II 
But this does not explain the Gettin of the fended of 
Gop as future. Result of the Monarchy. Religious aspect 
of the Hebrew monarchy (1) as a concession to a lower re- 
ligious ideal ; (2) as the foundation of a new religious and 
national ideal. Prophetic contrast of ideal and actual. 
Dawn of eschatological hope in this connexion. Widening 
of prophetic outlook in eighth century B.c.—Amos, Hosea, 
Isaiah - 14 
(4) Prophecy at the close of the neo (Behe A Ee 
and the Righteousness of Faith. Spiritual culmination in 
Jeremiah. The Exile. Rise of oe of the indi- 
vidual.” Doctrine of a future life . 21 
(c) Later eschatology : Daniel ; Apocalypse as a iia ae pe 
literature. Daniel’s legacy of ia The Maccabean move- 
ment and dynasty . : 7 27 
xiii 


xiv CONTENTS rf 


PAGE 
V IV. Summary of the pre-Christian history of belief in a Kingdom 
of Gop: Old Testament idea of Gop,—its history that of 

real revelation f : 3 : : op mae 


LECTURE II 


THE KINGDOM OF Gop (I.) IN THE GENERATION BEFORE CHRIST; 
(1I.) IN THE BESTS OF ST. PAUL; (III.) IN THE SYNOPTIC 
GOSPELS) [a 


I. The Lucan canticles and the Psalms of Solomon. Date and 
provenance of the latter. Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon. 
Their evidence as to Jewish expectation of the Kingdom of 
Gop. : 39 
II. Sharp contrast Rerecst St. Paul and the pales of Sdigiaenl 
The early apostolic Church and the Kingdom of Gop ; pre- 
paration for distinctive work of St. Paul. St. Paul places 
the Kingdom of Gop (qa) in the future, (4) in the present. 
Distinguishes between the Kingdom of Gop and the media- 
torial kingdom of Christ. The Kingdom of Gop and the 
Church of Christ. ‘‘ Kingdom” or ‘‘ Reign”? St. Paul’s 
complete spiritualisation of Jewish hopes. Was it wholly 
St. Paul’s work? . ; < ‘i 46 
III. The Kingdom of Gop in the Pelectank of Christ, Synoptic 
tradition. The ‘‘Gospel” of the Kingdom. ‘‘ Kingdom 
of Heaven” in St. Matthew. Our Lord supersedes national 
claims by moral conditions. The Kingdom present, and 
‘taken by force.” ‘*‘ Receiving” the Kingdom: character 
the test of sete Difficulty of entrance. ‘‘ Becoming 
as little children” . ; ; ; 61 
The Kingdom of Gop and Eternal ee The Kingdom of 
the Son of Man and the Kingdom of the Father. The 
Return of Christ ‘‘in his Kingdom.” The mediatorial 
Reign of the Messiah. The Kingdom of Gop, present and 
future, in relation to the twofold Advent of Christ. King- 
domand Church . ° - : ° . 68 


LECTURE III 


Tue KINGDOM OF GOD IN (a) THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS (concluded), 
IN (4) THE FouRTH GOSPEL, AND (c) IN THE REMAINDER 
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 


I. Synoptic tradition (concluded). The transition from old to 
new; the ‘‘discipled scribe.” Did the Kingdom of Gop 
come as an Idea, as an Institution, or asa Life? Ideas im- 
plicit in Nature and in Life . . ' : sik; ere 


II. 


III. 


IV, 


IT. 


III. 


IV, 


CONTENTS 


The Kingdom of Gop as a process; the Parables unfold the 
‘‘ mysteries ” of its growth. Parables ‘‘ of the Kingdom” . 

The Beatitudes link on the Synoptic to the Johannine aspect 
of the Kingdom of Gop : 

The Fourth Gospel. The Kingdom of Gop as Lies Timeless, 
and therefore both Future and Present : 

Unity of Pauline and evangelical tradition in this eels 
Relation of Christian to Jewish conception of the Kingdom 
of Gop : ; . . : - 

Summary of results. Christ’s Kingdom in relation to the 
Society of his followers. Function of the Spirit as vzcarzus 
Christi, Problems left to the experience of later Christendom. 
Did our Lord provide a complete system of government ? 

Epistles of St. James and St. ee Epistle to the Hebrews : 
the City of Gop 

The Apocalypse of St. John ; Mie pee Goncean begs 
of history. Contrast with St. Paul in respect to secular 
society and government : 

Contents and structure as bearing on its Fe eee tn 

The Kingdom of Christ on earth. The Thousand Years ane 
the question of realistic interpretation 


LECTURE IV 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE FIRST FOUR CHRISTIAN 


§ Y CENTURIES 


Alternative interpretations ; a Millennium not unnaturally asso- 
ciated with immAnence of the Parousia. But the latter a 
more universal belief than the other. Realistic eschatology 
of primitive Church, and the authority of the Apocalypse 

Predominance of Realistic Eschatology in the pre-Nicene age, 
and in the West till the time of St. Augustine. Examples 
of this. Favouring conditions : immaturity of theological 
thought ; the Church and civilisation ; intensity of primitive 
faith, Reasons for evanescence of Millenniarism ; its latent 
antagonism to the organised Church. Montanism, Was it 
conservative or revolutionary? Its eschatology conservative. 
Its rigorism narrowly so. Its downfall discredited eschato- 
logical Realism 

Rise of philosophical Ta A Gone with pate Cictan 
thought. The Gnostics, The Alexandrine School. Chris- 
tianity and Philosophy. The Alexandrian Theology made 
eschatological Realism (z.¢, Millenniarism) impossible. Per- 
manence of Origen’s influence : : 5 

Other causes of the decay of Millenniarism. The Christian 


XV 
PAGE 
87 
89 


90 


94 


96 


103 


105 
108 


113 


119 


124 


147 


xvi CONTENTS ; 


PAGE 
Empire. Divergence of East and West. Tendency in the 
West to an ecclesiastical conception of the Kingdom of 
Gop. Monasticism. Its original aim, anditsinfluence . 4158 


LECTURE V 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN ST. AUGUSTINE 


I. Position of Augustine in the history of Christian thought with 
reference to the Kingdom of Gop. His early Millen- 
niarism. His change of mind: The ‘‘ first Resurrection” 
spiritual only ; the ‘‘ thousand years” the life of the Church 
on earth. The; Kingdom of Gop twofold: The perfect 
Kingdom belongs to the next world; but Christ already 
reigns in his true members. Augustine’s opinion misrepre- 
sented in modern times. Augustine and his predecessors. 
What was Augustine’s own opinion? His explanation of 
the Apocalypse. The conception of the present Church 
as Kingdom of Gop subordinate to that of the Eternal 
Kingdom. “ +t) B69) 

II. Relation of this aes 4 his finan etee principles. 
Peculiar difficulty of formulating these in case of Augustine. 
(a) Augustine’s Theism, at once experimental and meta- 
physical. Idealism and Universalism. His religious debt 
to Plato. (4) His devotion to the Catholic Church. Debt 
of Western Christendom to him in this respect. The note 
of ‘‘catholicity” and the ‘‘Orbis Terrarum.” (c) His 
Doctrine of Grace ; not first formulated in antagonism to 
Pelagians. His change of mind in the year 396. ‘* Domzne 
da quod tubes.” Predestinarianism, vocatio non congrua. 
Influence of ‘‘ Augustinianism” in the Church A vin, EOE 

III. Augustine’s doctrine of the Church, how affected by his 
doctrine of Grace. The communio externa and the com- 
munio sanctorum ; which of the two is primary? Influence 
of his transcendentalism. Practically, the communzto externa 
has the attributes of the commumnzto sanctorum; but no true 
synthesis of the two; the latter not wholly included in the 
former. Practical result in the Church of the age following. 
Legacy of difficulty for later times. Impossibility of an 
intellectual solution . 194 

IV. The new religious philosophy 2 hike The Z Coie Dei. 
Problems involved in the fall of Rome. Augustine urged to 
deal with them; growth of his plan of reply. The two 
ctvitates. Origin of earthly kingdoms: grande latrocinium, 
Church and State, how far to be identified with the two 
ctvitates? mutual dependence ; but the civil society ideally 


CONTENTS 


dependent on the Church. Keynote of medieval system. 
Persecution : Augustine’s change of mind 

V. Twofold character of Augustine’s conception of the eee 
of Gop. The ideal and the empirical, reason and authority, 
unreconciled. Three great questions left for the Church of 
later ages. Summary of results E 


LECTURE VI 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE MEDIEVAL THEOCRACY 


I. Augustine’s legacy to the medieval Church: an ideal, but not 
a system. The early Middle Age favourable to practical 
development of system rather than to analysis of ideas. 
Gregory the Great, his work as a buildér-up of papal power 

II. The dark ages. (a) Before Charles the Great. Birth of a 
new Order. Thehouse of Pipin. Temporal power of popes. 
Donation of Constantine. Charles: temporary revival of 
the Christian Imperial ideal. Feudalism in the Church 

(6) Post-Carolingian period. Break up of Caroline system. The 
Pseudo-Isidorian decretals ; their effect upon medieval idea 
of the Church. Nicolas 1. Temporary arrest of the de- 
velopment of the papalsystem. Moral decay of the papacy. 
Rome under Alberic and John x11. The Saxon emperors. 
The Holy Roman Empire. Second phase of the medieval 
embodiment of the Kingdom of Gop onearth. The German 
popes ; regeneration of the papacy. Gerbert, Henry 111., 
Leo 1x., Nicolas 11. The College of Cardinals. ; 

III. (2) Hildebrand and his successors. Alexander 11. Hilde- 
brand virtually pope. The Cluniac order; its ideal of 
Church Reform: earlier life and election of Hildebrand. 
His ideal of the kingdom of Christ ; no later pope could add 
to it in principle. Collision with the crown. Investiture. 
Feudal headship of emperor or pope? 

(4) Gregorian and Augustinian ideas. Eamtiations of eee s 
view. Necessity of statecraft to his ideal. Cheapening of the 
censures, etc., of the Church. The popes and the emperors. 

IV. The Hohenstaufen. Rise of the Schools. Amold of Brescia ; 
the typical medieval reformer. His death. Frederick Bar- 
barossa, Adrian Iv., and Alexander 111. Defeat of imperial 
idealism. Innocent 111.: gradual deterioration of papal 
ideal. The Lateran Council. Frederick 11. and the popes 
of the early thirteenth century: Falk of the contest. 
Triumph of Papacy over Empire 

V. Rise of the new nations, Thomas kaa on Chinicli ind 
b 


217 


225 


248 


xviii CONTENTS 


king. Decline of the medieval system. Beginning of 
concordats. Review of the theocracy of Gregory VII. 
Gregory x.; inherent weakness of imperial ideal ; success of 
papacy as a religious power, how far complete? its failure as 
a political influence. Papal extortions, spiritual injury to 
local Churches. Failure to appreciate moral forces. Per- 
secutions. Blame not to be fixed on individuals. Conclu- 
sion; Augustine and the medieval system ; contrast of ideals 


LECTURE VII 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE DIVERGENCE OF MODERN IDEALS 


I, Intellectual and Moral break-up of medieval convictions. Dante 
and Augustine ; (2) Dante and the de Monarchia . : 
(6) Historical conditions. The Franciscan ideal and Arnold of 
Brescia. Abbot Joachim and the Spiritual Franciscans. 
Dante and the Spirituals. John xx11. and the Franciscan 
ideal. Cesena, Ockham, and Lewis of Bavaria : 
(c) Importance of reign of Lewis. Ockham; his criticism of the 
Papacy as an institution in the Church. Ockham a modern 
mind; not an imperialist; his love of truth; tendency to 
blind faith . : : , : . 
(@) The Defensor Pacis. Marsilius primarily a constructive politi- 
cal thinker. Account of his main principles ; sovereignty of 
People, function of Prince, coercive power, constitutional 
Government in modern sense. Accuracy in treating ecclesi- 
astical terms. The priesthood andthe Sovereign power. The 
Church and the Papacy. Counciis; persecution, Church and 
State. Strong, and weaker, elements in the Marsilian idea. 
His practical tendency towards separation of Church and State 
(e) Summary. Conflict of the Gregorian ideal with political 
philosophy and with spirit of constitutional self-government. 
Arnold of Brescia and the medieval ideal of life: movements 
in favour of Poverty converge, in Dante and Marsilius, with 
new idea of Society ‘ 

II. Doctrinal reaction and the Eve of the Beeman The alia 
movements almost wholly orthodox in doctrine. Wycliffe 
and Hus compared to earlier reformers. The conciliar 
movement for reform; its defeat. Despair of practical 
Reform. Contrasts of the fifteenth century. The Reforma- 
tion not due to individual will ‘ , 

III. Divergence of ideals in Reformation and Grantee Reforma 
(a) Work of the Counter-Reformation. The Council of Trent 
and its legacy of unsolved problems: (a) Augustinian doctrine 

of Grace. (8) Relation of Pope to Episcopate and to Tradi- 


PAGE 


270 


286 


294 


395 


311 


322 


326 


Sf 


CONTENTS 


tion. (y) Direction of moral conduct and Probabilism ; 
Re ee ee of the 
Church - 

(6) Connexion of these date eee the alereeiaeic of the 
Kingdom of God as the Church-State. Authority and 
morality: Legalism in Ethics, The Church and modern 
civilisation . - : 

IV. Conclusion : derceaty aoa Christian unity 


LECTURE VIII 
THE KINGDOM OF GoD IN MoDERN THOUGHT, WORK, AND LIFE 


I. The Reformation. Why not a period of construction? The 
Reformers and an “invisible church.” What did Luther 
and Calvin hold? Position taken by the English Church. 
The question Cee ee eae 
solved . . . P 

II. New study of the Selecta: why alia aa Ritschl’s conception 
of the Kingdom of God : how related to that of the Church ; 
twofold character of the idea of the Church. His system 
criticised. Ritschl and St. Augustine. Moral aim of human 
Society. The Church im relation tothis . 

III. Summary of ideals. An earthly realisation of the ioe of 
God to be looked for. The Church, how thought of in this 
relation. Negative result of our enquiry im reference to 
millennial and to medieval interpretations, Positive ideal ; 
its assertion by Butler; lacks necessary element of Brother- 
hood. Church legislation. In forming ideals, our view not 
to be limited by what appears aaa The true remedy 
for 2 false individualism 

IV. Other ideals (2) the purely efincal ideal. The Church mal nionel 
eamestness. Good in non-Christians. Has the Church a 
moral interest in public matters? Gop the Source of all good 

(4) Christain Socialism. State action, how far able to produce 
morality? But social life demands Christian principles, and 
conversely. Christian Socialism a summons to neglected 
duties. But social reform alone will not constitute the 
Kingdom of Gop on earth . 

Vv. The Chretien sisi and the Woskl to come. St. Paul and 
‘*otherworldliness.” Real teaching of Scripture on this 
point. The Chief Good must be eternal. Limited duration 
of the world. Are the highest ideals perishable? Purpose 
and method in the Universe : purpose in Existence and Life. 


INDEX . 


PAGE 


343 
347 


353 


357 


364 


373 


377 


381 





ie CoE Raat 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE OLD 
TESTAMENT 


For however great uncertainty may still hang over the details of Old 
Testament history, the history of the Jews is, in its broad and unquestion- 
able outlines, the history of a people who believed, and who, with all their 
failures and relapses, lived as believing, in the intercourse of Gop and 
man: who believed in the kinsmanship of men as made by Gop for His 
glory: who believed in the righteous sovereignty of Gop, guiding the 
affairs of the world to an issue corresponding with the purpose of Creation. 

WESTCOTT, 


REGNUM DEI 


LECTURE I 


INTRODUCTORY. THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE 
OLD TESTAMENT 


Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth 
throughout all generations.—Ps. cxlv. 13. 


THE doubts and distractions of our age, and the ques- 
tions at issue between the various systems which 
compete for the allegiance of the modern man, appear 
to turn ultimately upon the two kindred questions of 
the Government of the World and the purpose of Life. 
The two questions are not identical, for the former is 
speculative, and relates to the constitution of the world 
around us, while the other is strictly practical, and 
upon the answer to it depends the tone and colour of 
the individual life. But they are closely connected, for 
the practical question cannot receive even a practical 
answer without an implied assumption upon the wider 
issue. Common to both is the idea of purpose. 
Theoretically, if we can gain the conviction that pur- 
pose sways the forces of the universe and guides its 


history, it follows that man can only find the true end 
3 


4 REGNUM DEI 


of his being in subordination to and in harmony with 
the Supreme Will which embraces nature and man in 
one. But practically, the process is reversed ; the more 
intense our sense of purpose in our individual life— 
the more lasting and comprehensive and satisfying the 
purpose which guides and sustains us as individuals, 
the more energetic becomes our hold upon the supreme 
truth of the Divine Government of the World, the 
deeper our homage in deed and thought to the abso- 
lutely Holy Will. The conviction of purpose in the 
individual life and the conviction of purpose in the 
universe, in short, act and react. The vigour of 
the one strengthens, the weakness of the one enfeebles, 
the other. Individual lives furnish exceptions to this 
general truth, but I speak of the tendency which 
asserts itself in the average and mass of human life. 
To say this is to appeal to experience, the experience 
not only of the individual but still more of the human 
race. Believers have differed as to the theoretical 
cogency of the speculative proofs offered in support of 
the fundamental truths of God and the soul. I do not 
join in the tendency to disparage the proofs in ques- 
tion, on the contrary I believe them to be, so far as 
they go, indispensable and of great importance. But 
the mere fact that these proofs carry conviction, to 
equally sincere and religious minds, in very unequal 
degrees, must make us cautious of expecting too much 
from them. Moreover it is not as a matter of fact by 
means of them that we reach belief in God, or in our- 
selves as responsible beings. These priceless convic- 
tions come to us in all cases through those who possess 
them, and who have put them to the test of life. The 


RELIGION AND PURPOSE 5 


religious experience of mankind is a fact unquestion- 
able and unquestioned; the stream of religious con- 
viction has flowed down to us from sources not all 
of which we can any longer trace, it has received 
tributaries, it has run in many channels and in vary- 
ing degrees of depth and clearness and power. But 
wherever it has flowed it has kept alive that belief 
in the ultimate sovereignty of truth and right which 
is the central faith of all good men; it has upborne 
those who have faced with cheerfulness and courage 
the sharpest trials of life, and have raised and cheered 
the lives of their fellow-men. It is in the religious 
experience of mankind alone that the verification of 
religious conviction is to be found.t 

That the Christian Religion, and its antecedent 
development, recorded in the Old Testament, consti- 
tute the centre and heart of the religious experience 
of mankind will not be disputed, even by those who 
regard all religious experience as founded upon illusion. 
Here, that which underlies all religion, though in many 
religions so mingled with heterogeneous matter as to be 
hard to discover, the simplest instinct of man’s thirst 
for a living GoD,—finds its simplest expression, its 
simplest satisfaction. Here too we find prominence 


1 No two regions of thought could well be wider apart than that of the 
physicist reiterating his conviction, founded upon minute investigation of 
the bui.ding up of molecules and the behaviour of atoms, of ‘‘the 
rationa ity of all natural processes” (Dr. Larmor at the British Associa- 
tion, Zimes of Sept. 7, 1900), and that of Deborah (Judg. v. 11) rehearsing 
*‘the righteous acts of Jehovah toward his villages in Israel.” The one 
is approaching God by intellectual steps, the other is drawing full-handed 
from religious experience. But both processes already meet in the pro- 
phecy of Amos as really, though not as analytically, as they do in the 
pages of St. Augustine himself. 


6 REGNUM DEI 


given to the most elemental needs of our moral nature, 
both in its ideal loftiness and in its actual humilia- 
tion and weakness. Nowhere else are mythical and 
incongruous elements, fanaticisms and superstitions, so 
markedly absent, or, if present, so readily disengaged 
from the religion itself. 

It is then worth while, or rather it is of the highest 
importance, to examine Christian experience with 
reference to the great twofold problem of life,—the 
purpose of God in guiding the affairs of man, and 
the supreme purpose—the sammum bonum—which 
we are severally to set before us as the goal of our 
life. 

Both aspects of the problem before us come, in the 
teaching of Christ, under the general conception of the 
Kingdom of GoD, the kingdom in which the consum- 
mation of the ages will find its final issue, and which 
we are each one of us first of all things to pray for 
and to seek, in the confidence that if that is gained, 
all subordinate good things will be added in GOD’s own 
time. 

It is the purpose of these Lectures to contribute 
something, however small, toward the interpretation, 
and thus to the vindication, of the supreme goal set 
before us by our Lord under the name of the Kingdom 
of GoD. 

To interpret it adequately or worthily, even in its 
imperfect earthly manifestation, is a task wholly 
beyond individual power; the task is imposed upon 
the Society of all who bear Christ’s name, and even so 
the interpretation must be progressive and subject to 
correction, and must remain imperfect in the’ end. 


i s 


OUR LORD’S TEACHING 7 


To promise a decisive and rounded - off conclusion 


would therefore condemn our attempt in advance. 


But what we can do is to interrogate Christian ex- 
perience as disclosed in the history of the Christian 
Society. So far as the life and thought of that Society 
has been moulded by different conceptions of the 
Kingdom of GOD, those conceptions have been put to 
the test of experience, and as they have emerged con- 
firmed or discredited, the result should enable us to 
distinguish between the more transitory and the more 
lasting elements in the Master Idea; and so we may 
learn to correct and purify our own ideals, and bring 
our working aims and convictions into closer corre- 
spondence with ultimate reality. 

We must begin with the attempt to understand, so 
far as is possible, the meaning which our Lord himself 
gave to the Idea. This will occupy three Lectures ; 
the present Lecture will sketch the Old Testament 
antecedents, the second, after placing in comparison 
the conceptions of the Kingdom of GOD entertained 
respectively by those whom our Lord found “ waiting 
for” it, and by St. Paul the great Pharisee of the 
generation which had learned from Christ, will show 
how the points of agreement and difference alike 
presuppose the teaching of Christ as recorded in the 
synoptic Gospels.. The third Lecture will complete 
this subject, and will consider the evidence derivable 
from the Fourth Gospel, the remaining Epistles, and the 
Apocalypse. The fourth Lecture will deal with the 
realistic eschatology of the primitive Church, as in- 
fluenced in part by the Apocalypse, in part by other 
causes. This marks a very important, though transi- 


8 REGNUM DEI 


tory, phase in the Christian conception of the Kingdom 
of Gop. The fifth Lecture will aim at doing justice to 
the influence of St. Augustine, as closing an epoch of 
Christian thought on this subject, and as opening a 
new epoch in which opposing conceptions, both rooted 
in Augustine’s thought, are destined to contend for the 
mastery. In the sixth Lecture, the medieval papacy 
will be treated as the attempt to give effect to one of 
these alternative conceptions, viz. that of the Kingdom 
of GOD as an omnipotent Church, an attempt in which 
theory followed the lead of practice. The seventh 
Lecture will describe the intellectual and moral break- 
up of this system, and how, from being the ideal of 
Christendom as a whole, it became theoretically 
elaborated as that of a party in Christendom. Then, 
after dealing briefly with the reassertion, at the Re- 
formation, of one distinctively Augustinian conception 
of the Church and with its consequences as affecting 
the subject of our study, it will be endeavoured to 
gather up the result of the whole enquiry, and to bring 
its results to bear upon some problems which confront 
the Christian in modern life. To do this will be the 
object of the eighth and last Lecture. 


II 


One point must impress us at the outset of our 
enquiry. Whatever difficulties may attend the attempt 
to do justice to the fact in modern theology, there can 
be no questionfhat in our Lord’s teaching the Kingdom 
of GOD is the representative and all-embracing summary 
of his distinctive mission. The Baptist came to an- 


OUR LORD’S TEACHING 9 


nounce that the Kingdom of GoD was at hand,! and 
when Jesus himself began to teach, what he taught is 
summed up in the same words,—‘“repent, for the 
kingdom of GOD has come near.” And it was not 
only the beginning of his teaching but the end as 
well. In the forty days before he was taken up, “he 
was seen of them, and was telling them the things 
concerning the kingdom of GopD.”’? Throughout, his 
message is “the good news of the kingdom,” +—the 
kingdom which comes with his coming,—to accept his 
gospel is to receive the Kingdom of Gop, the first 
prayer he taught his disciples to address to their 
Father in heaven was “ Thy kingdom come.” Devout 
Israelites like Joseph of Arimathea and many others 
who pass before us in the gospel pages have this as 
the goal of their hopes, they are “looking for the 
kingdom of GopD.’® It is to be the goal of Christian 
life and effort.’ It sums up the preaching of the 
Apostles after the Lord’s visible presence was with- 
drawn. Philip in Samaria, St. Paul at Ephesus 
and at Rome, preach and teach “concerning the 
kingdom of God.’® “ Descriptions” it has been truly 
said “of the characteristics of the kingdom, expositions 
of its laws, accounts of the way men were actually 
receiving it, forecasts of its future, make up the whole 
central portion of the synoptic narrative.” ® 

But our Saviour did not begin by defining the 


1 Matt. iii. 2. 2 Matt. iv. 17, parallel with Mark i. 15. 
® Acts i. 3. 4 Matt. iv. 23, xiii. 19. 

5 Matt. xii. 28; Mark x. 15; Luke xviii. 17. 

6 Mark xv. 43. 7 Matt. vi. 33; Luke xii. 31. 


8 Acts viii. 12, xix. 8, xx. 25, xxviii. 23, 31. 
® Stanton, The Jewish and the Christian Messiah, p. 206. 


10 REGNUM DEI 


Kingdom of GoD. He simply announced it. And 
this implies that his hearers, even those who were not, 
in the signal and pre-eminent sense, “ waiting for the 
Kingdom of GOD,’ were prepared to attach some 
meaning to the phrase. Even the hostile Pharisees 
ask “when the kingdom of GOD is to come.”! Christ 
is not introducing an idea wholly new to his hearers, 
but is making use of one which already existed, and 
was exercising a spell over men’s minds. What is 
told us of select individuals was true in a real, though 
a lower and less intimate sense of the nation as a 
whole. Christ found Israel as a nation looking for the 
Kingdom of Gop. This fact stands in the closest 
connexion with the national hope of a Messiah, an 
anointed king, who was to be raised up by GOD in the 
latter days to “restore again the kingdom to Israel,” ? 
to bring back national independence, and to revive all 
the splendour and national well-being which tradition 
associated with the kingdom of David. This hope 
varied doubtless in its character according to the 
spiritual capacities of those who cherished it; some 
_ thought more of the external and political, others of 
the religious blessings of which the Messiah-King was 
to be the bearer,—but it was universal, and in the 
more spiritual minds the idea of political deliverance 
was subordinated entirely to that of religious reforma- 
tion and enlarged moral opportunity. Their hopes 
are expressed in the verse of the Benedictus: “ That 
we being delivered from the hand of our enemies 
might serve him without fear, in holiness and right 
eousness before him, all the days of our life’? In 
1 Luke xvii. 20. 2 Acts i. 6. 3 Luke i. 74. 


—. 


EARLY HEBREW IDEAL II 


proclaiming that the Kingdom of GOD was at hand, 
Jesus Christ takes his stand upon the national hope of 
Israel. What then was the hope actually entertained 
by the nation? and how far did Christ really make it 
his own? This question can only be answered as we 
proceed ; but meanwhile we may say thus much: Our 
Lord gradually untaught his Disciples the hope as - 
they held it at the first, and taught it them again in 

a wholly transformed shape. 


III 


(a) Their hope had come down to them from the 
past. Like the Religion of Christ generally, this 
“exhaustive category” of Christ's teaching has its 
roots in the Old Testament. We shall indeed search 
the Old Testament in vain for the Ahkrase “ Kingdom 
of GoD” or “ Kingdom of Heaven.” It belongs to the 
vocabulary of the New Testament, not of the Old. 
But it has its antecedents and elements in the Old — 
Testament; and for these we must now enquire. The 
most direct Old Testament source for the New Testa- 
ment idea of the Kingdom of GOD is without doubt 
the book of Daniel, which in two passages—to be 
referred to more particularly later on—speaks of a 
kingdom to be set up by the Most High himself, ay 
kingdom which his saints are to possess! But the 
book of Daniel itself comes at the end of a long 
process of development or of divine schooling, in the 


1 Dan. ii. 44, vii. 14, 27. Dalman, Worte Jesu, p. 109, makes a distinc- 
tion between the sense of BaciAela in these two passages which I cannot 
wholly follow. 





12 REGNUM DEI 


course of which Israel was led to frame its ideal of a 
Golden Age. | Whereas other nations looked sadly 
back to their golden age over a long series of succes- 
sive declensions, Israel alone “placed its golden age 

in the future.” The religions of antiquity were pessi- 
mistic and despairing in their philosophy of history ; 

the religion of Israel was a religion of hope. From 
early times the germ of this phenomenon may be 
detected in the consciousness of a relation of the 
people to its GOD unlike anything that could be found 

in any other people—a relation which carried with it 

a peculiar consecration and an exceptional destiny. 
Their tradition of the great deliverance from Egypt 
told how Moses had promised them in Jehovah’s name 
that if they would obey his voice they would be “a 
peculiar treasure unto me above all people—for all the 
earth is mine :—and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of 
priests and an holy nation.”! The passage is regarded 

by critics as Deuteronomic in style and date, ae. as 
tinged with the influence of the later prophets; but in 
substance the idea expressed is as old as any prophecy \ 
of which we know. The prophecies of Balaam describe 
how “It is a people that dwell alone, and shall not be 
reckoned among the nations ”*—Israel was thought of, ) 
at any rate by its religious leaders, as marked off from ¢ } 
other nations,——governed by no human king—over | 
whom “Jehovah shall reign for ever and ever”*— | 
Gideon refuses the throne for this reason: “I will not . 
rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: 
Jehovah shall rule over you.”* When the people 


/ 


"2 Ex. xix. 5, 6. 2 Num. xxiii. 9. 
3 Ex. xv. 18. 4 Judg. viii. 23. 


EARLY HEBREW IDEAL ~ 13 


demand a king, it is not Samuel, but Jehovah himself, 
whom they are deposing, “they have not rejected thee, 
but they have rejected me that I should not be king 
over them.”! “When ye saw that Nahash king of the 
children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto 
me, Nay, but a king shall reign over us; when Jehovah 
your God was your king.”? This protest means that 
Israel is, as a nation, a kingdom of GOD; the practical 
demand involved is for the surrender of the nation’s 
self to the rule and guidance of their God, Jehovah, 
who had by his mighty works made himself known to 
them as their deliverer, “I am Jehovah thy God who 
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt,—thou shalt 
have none other god but me.”? To assign a time for 
the origin of this ideal is I think not possible; in germ 
it appears coeval with the beginnings of the distinctive 
nationality and religion of Israel. But we may ask 
with more prospect of a definite result when and how 
this ideal became energetically formulated, and by 
what steps it led to the expectation of a future King- 
dom of GoD. 

Israel comes before us in its earliest scarcely date- 
able records as a group of tribes, very loosely organised, 
but able, when great occasions arose, to co-operate 

1; Sam. viii. 7. 21 Sam. xii. 12. 

3 Ex. xx. 2, and often. What is contended is not that other peoples of 
antiquity, and Israel’s nearest neighbours (Moab as in Mesha’s Stone) were 
not theocratic, but that the moral character of Jehovah, and the moral 
link between him and his people, were conceived by the earliest religious 
teachers of the Israelites in a way to which the religion of other peoples 
does not furnish a parallel. That the reciprocal relation between Jehovah 
and Israel is moral is involved in germ in the idea of Covenant. (See 
W. Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, chap. ii. [1st ed.]; Ritschl, Unter- 


richt, § 7, and Dr. Davidson’s art. ‘‘ Covenant” in Hastings’ Dzct. of the 
Bible, 


AS 


14 REGNUM DEI 


more or less completely as a whole. And when they 
do so, the bond of union between the tribes is Jehovah. 
Defaulters are traitors to him. “Curse ye Meroz, said 
the angel of Jehovah, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants 
thereof; because they came not to the help of Jehovah 
—to the help of Jehovah against the mighty.”1 The 
wars of Israel are recorded as “ the wars of Jehovah” ;? 
the cause of the nation is his cause; scandalous offences 
are sins against the collective national conscience— 
“folly in Israel.” 

But we do not trace in the earliest history any such 
profound sense of the unfitness of the people Israel to 
be the vehicle of a spiritual idea as to lead them to 
lean upon the future for the realisation of the golden 
age of a true kingdom of GOD. 

This deepening of the national conscience was the 
work of the nation’s experience under the Monarchy. 
The Monarchy is presented to us in tradition under 
two contrasted but really complementary aspects. 

(1) On the one hand the religious conservatism of 
the people, and the religious idealism of their teachers, 
alike resented the centralisation of political power. 
The language of Samuel already quoted gives strong 
expression to this resentment. The warning of 
Deuteronomy ® as to the evils which would attend the 
establishment of a kingdom are in harmony with those 
of Samuel,‘ and both find their verification in the reign 
of King Solomon® There are many indications that 

1 Judg. v. 23. 2 Num. xxi. 14. 
3 Deut. xvii. 14. 41 Sam. viii. 10-18. 
5 In Deut. the warnings are directed against (1) multiplication of horses, 


(2) intercourse with Egypt, (3) multiplication of wives, (4) multiplication 
of silver and gold, (5) overweening pride. Samuel assumes (1) (4) and (5) 


—— 


EARLY HEBREW IDEAL 15 


the monarchy was established before the nation was 
politically ripe for it—the reign of David over Judah 
was for some years confronted with the allegiance of 
Israel to Ishbosheth; the details of Absalom’s revolt 
show that the ascendency which David succeeded in 
establishing over Israel was purely personal, and main- 
tained itself in spite of a deep cleavage between the 
Northern and the Southern portions of the kingdom.1 
The census of the whole nation was an innovation 
amounting, in the eyes even of Joab, to sacrilege, and 
when it was carried out Judah and Israel were still 
treated as separate units. Solomon’s reorganisation of 
the country for the purpose of taxation ? looks? like an ' 
attempt to supersede the tribal organisation by one 
conceived on fiscal and political lines, centralised round 
Judah. The principal fiscal officer* appointed by 
Solomon was stoned as soon as the great king was 
dead—and even when he was at the height of his 


and adds (6) forced labour, a standing army (practically identifiable with 
(1), and heavy taxation in kind (cf. (4)), coupled with (7) confiscations of 
real property (v. 14). All these apply to Solomon except (7) of which 
there is no direct evidence, and (6) which also seems doubtful (comp, 1 Kings 
ix. 22 with xii. 4, etc.). : 

12 Sam. xix. 41. 2 1 Kings iv. 7 sqq. 

* our tribes are ignored: Simeon, Dan, Zebulon, and Reuben—and of 
course Leyi. Judah is not provided for, excepting that the Philistine 
border is administered as two departments. Four tribes are left as depart- 
ments : Benjamin, Naphthali, Ephraim (z.¢. its hill country), and Asher. 
The latter receives an added district. Probably Western Manasseh may 
be added, or at least that part which included the plain of Sharon (Naphath- 
Dor). Eastern Manasseh, Gad, and Issachar are curiously subdivided. 
The N. division of Issachar has the tribal name, but may have included 
part of Zebulon. The two Eastern tribes form three departments not easy 
to delimit. The outlying and especially the richer districts seem to receive 
careful reorganisation ; the whole plan suggests that Judah is the only tribe 
whose allegiance can be taken for granted. 

4 Adoniram (or Adoram), 1 Kings iv. 6, xii, 18. 


ea 


16 REGNUM DEI 


power, the voice of prophecy, in the memorable scene 


between Ahijah and Jeroboam, had doomed the pre- . 


carious fabric of a united Israel to an early fall. 
Ahijah, it is true, bases his message upon the personal 
sin of Solomon, not upon any condemnation of monarchy 
as such. He may not, for all we know, have shared 
the feelings of Samuel on that subject. But Samuel’s 
influence was too great to die with him, and of his 
view of the monarchy no doubt is permitted to us: he 
looked upon it as an apostasy from the nation’s 
religious ideal. 

(2) But the Monarchy has another and widely 
different aspect in religious tradition. On purely 
utilitarian grounds, indeed, the advantages of a central 
authority were obvious and tangible. Men looked 
back with relief from the times of monarchy, with all 
its faults, upon the anarchy which had_preceded it. 


“In those days there was no king in Israel: every 


man did that which was right in his own eyes.”! But 
this was only a small part of the truth. The reign, 
the achievements, and the personality of David formed 
the nucleus of an ideal which struck deep and lasting 


root in popular feeling. Amid their later vicissitudes, — 


the Hebrews forgot the many failures of David’s iéign 
in comparison with its unquestionable splendours. 
Under David the Hebrew kingdom had been—for its 
opportunities—great and successful, its foreign wars 
untarnished by defeat, its king reigning in closest 
loyalty to Jehovah, the home life of the people pro- 
tected from invasion, but not interfered with by the 


state. Oriental peoples are as a rule little appreciative 


1 Judg. xvii. 6, xviii. 1, xxi. 25. 


"138 4 
“s. 


EARLY HEBREW IDEAL 17 


of civil organisation ; they will respect only a strong 
ruler; but they will /ove a monarch who is in sympathy 
with their character. Like the Persians who remem- 
bered Cyrus as a Father) Cambyses as a master, 
Darius as a tradesman, the Hebrews, apparently in 
Israel and Judah alike, cherished the memory of David 
as the symbol of a glorious past, and the highest 
embodiment of their hopes for a happier future. Even 
Amos, whose mission is in Northern Israel, and Hosea, 
a north-Israelite by birth and sentiment, equally with 
Micah the prophet of the Judean peasantry, contrast- 
ing later kings and later reigns with the traditional 
glories of David, associate the future resurrection of 
national life with a new David and a new national 
unity under a regenerated dynasty of David’s line? 
Secondly, the monarchy did in a very real sense 
centralise the national conscience; this allowed the 
contrast between the ideal and the actual to come to 
a head, and thus the way was prepared for the growth 
of a more definite hope of an age to come. This 
contrast was heightened by the manifest and increasing 
decay of social life, and the divorce of religion from 
conduct, both of which evils are lashed by Amos and 
Isaiah, and by that assimilation of the religion of 


Jehovah to local worships which is denounced by 


1 Herod. rr. lxxxix.: rt #riéo re cal ayaba oge wavta éunyariearo. 
The contrasted reference is to Darius’ careful organisation of the finances 
of his empire. 

* take the passages in question as they stand, though fully aware that 
Professor Sayce (Higher Criticism and Mon., chaps. ix. and x.) and others 
hold that Amos and Hosea bear marks of Judean editing; the identifica- 
tion of these marks appears somewhat subjective, and I cannot follow Pro- 
fessor Charles (Zschatology, p. 83) in extending the principle to most of the 
Messianic passages in the four earliest prophetical books. 

az 


18 REGNUM DEI 


Hosea. These corruptions were linked, in the pro- 
phetic survey of the times, with the overhanging peril 
of Assyria, which the prophets interpreted as the 
scourge which was to purify the life of Israel and 
bring about the establishment of a regenerated king- 
dom. 
From the death of Solomon down to that of Uzziah— 
or the contemporary close of the reign of Jeroboam II. 
—the name “ Israel” belongs specially to the northern 
kingdom.1. The main volume of national life, the chief 
vicissitudes of religious history, the great prophetic 
personalities, and the very important though somewhat 
obscure institutions of prophetic fraternities, from which 
the great and individually inspired prophets stand out 
like peaks from a range of lower heights, all are found 
in the kingdom of Israel, and lend undying interest to 
its records. With the death of Uzziah and the call of 
Isaiah we find Israel already hastening to political 
effacement and Judah fully ripe to continue the develop- 
ment for a time. About this time we trace the earliest 
form of eschatological hope, the germ from which both | j 
the definite expectation of a personal Messiah-king and — 
that of a kingdom of GOD derive their origin—-viz. | 
the hope of a restored and purified Israel. The ne 
\ 


J 


pre-canonical prophets, indeed, were concerned with the 
present rather than with the future. Elijah, no doubt, 
when he despairs of Israel as it is, is rebuked? by the | 
reminder of the seven thousand who have not bowed the | 
knee to Baal;—and this conception of a faithful minority, 


1 Reference may be permitted to an article by the present writer which 
aims at doing justice to the Biblical estimate of Northern Israel (Zhe 
Thinker, Jan. 1895). 

2: Kings xix. 14-18. 


EARLY HEBREW IDEAL 19 


who were to form the nucleus of a regenerated people, 
was destined to become fruitful in the hands of later pro- 
phets. But his main mission, and that of Elisha also, 
was different, namely to be “very jealous” for the Lord of 
Hosts—to vindicate the exclusive sovereignty of Jehovah 


over Israel. Both Elijah and Elisha exemplify the 


growing prophetic consciousness that Israel is far below 
the ideal of a “ people of Jehovah.” But Elisha’s direct 
mission is simply to supersede a sinful dynasty ; and he 
lives long enough to see how little such a remedy can 
really effect. 

With Amos and Hosea begins a new prophetic 
epoch; not merely the beginning of written prophecy, 
although this implies much, but the opening out of a 
wider outlook upon the forces which were moulding the 
future of the world, and a longer vista of time—an out- 
look upon a future of which we do yet see to the end. 
The contemporaries of Amos had the expectation of a 
“day of the Lord” —they hoped for some decisive 
intervention by Jehovah in favour of his people which 
would relieve the anxieties which were crowding round 
them, and proclaim Jehovah and his people Israel 
victorious over their foes. To these hopes Amos sternly 
gives the lie. The day of Jehovah would come indeed, 
but not such a day as they expected. “Woe unto you 
that desire the day of the LoRD. Wherefore would ye 
have Jehovah’s day: shall not Jehovah’s day be dark- 
ness and not light—even very dark and no brightness 
in it?” Jehovah has indeed a special care for Israel, 
but the first result of this will be sharp and speedy 
vengeance upon their sins. “You only have I known 
of all the families of the earth—therefore I will punish 


< 


20 REGNUM DEI 


you for your iniquities.”1 And Hosea, though he 
dwells upon the unquenchable love of Jehovah for Israel, 
holds out no hope of escape from the terrible collapse 
of the nation which the immediate future is to bring. 
Both prophets however look for restoration, to follow, y 
and to be effected by, the furnace of affliction, and both 
associate the regeneration of the people with a revival 
of the monarchy of David. Here then we have the 
contrast between the ideal and the actual formulated 
with all possible clearness, and while the actual present 
is painted with ruthless severity, the ideal is assured in 
the future. But it is in Isaiah that this new germ of ~ 
prophecy is ripened toa head. His denunciation of the 
present is most marked and unsparing in the prophecies 
which immediately follow his call “in the year that 
King Uzziah died,”? ze. in the early days of Ahaz. “ How 
long?” is the keynote of these earlier utterances. Then 
under Ahaz comes the combination of denunciation and 
promise, when special prominence is given to the thought 
of a king under whom the divine guidance of Israel shall 
once more be the ruling reality of the nation’s life. 
Immanuel will appear, and that very shortly, and the 
land of Israel is his destined kingdom. Meanwhile, 
Isaiah has collected round him a band of disciples, who 
will, so it would seem, form a nucleus for the remnant* 
that shall escape the overflowing scourge and constitute 
the beginnings of a new and worthier people of Jehovah. 
Under Hezekiah the promise is more clearly formulated. 
The personality of the Messiah-king is now less pro- 


1 Amos v. 18-20, iii. 2. See Charles, Eschatology, pp. 82, 84 sqq. 
2 It is impossible to assign any considerable time for an independent 
reign of Jotham. 


PROPHECY AND THE CAPTIVITY 21 


minent, but the regenerate kingdom fills the prophet’s 
imagination! It is linked on with the actual Israel by 
the remnant that will be spared when the scourge of 
Jehovah’s anger-has passed over the land: but although 
the realisation of the blessed future will be in and for 
Israel, the whole world will share init. The regenerate 
kingdom will be a channel of blessing to all mankind ; 
even Assyria and Egypt, the two signal representatives 
of the hostile world-empire, will be numbered with 
Israel as God’s people and the work of his hands? 

(6) The next period of prophecy, under Josiah and 
his sons, coincides with the discovery of Deuteronomy, 
in which book Moses is interpreted to the people by the 
prophets—the ancient law passing, through the medium 
of prophecy, into the national consciousness. As a 
result, the faithful minority become more sharply defined ; | 
and at the same time their world-wide mission is again 
emphasised. “Seek ye Jehovah, all ye meek of the 
earth—it may be ye shall be hid in the day of Jehovah’s 
anger.” “For I will turn to the peoples a pure 
language, that they may all call upon the name of 
Jehovah, to serve him with one consent.” “ But I will 
leave in the midst of them an afflicted and poor people, 
and they shall trust in the name of Jehovah.” Here 
we very nearly reach the universalism of the 87th 


1 Isa, xxxiii. 

* Isa, xix. 16-25. The universalism of this passage is a splendid paradox 
in the mouth of a contemporary of Hezekiah. But to put the passage far 
later than the Assyrian period (Charles, p. 113) is surely a more startling 
historical paradox. Micah, the prophet of the Judean peasantry, has in 
common with Isaiah the hope of a renewed purity of national life, and of a 
Davidic prince. But unlike Isaiah, he demands the destruction of the 
sinful capital (iii. 12, iv. 10, i. 5). In this, he anticipates Jeremiah. 

3 Zeph. ii. 3, iii. 9, 12. For another side to Zephaniah, see Charles, p. 98. 


22 REGNUM DEI 


Psalm, in which the thought of Isa. xix. is carried 
to its highest development— 


I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them 
that know me. 


Behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia ; 
This one was born there. 


Yea of Zion shall it be said, This one and that one was born 
in her. 


The LorD shall count, when he writeth up the peoples, 
This one was born there. 


To this period, again, belongs the first formulation of 
the underlying principle of universalism + in the famous 
verse of Habakkuk, which furnished St. Paul with the 
text for his Epistle to the Romans, “ The just shall live 
by his faith.”* And even more explicit is the superb 
passage of Jeremiah,® “Behold the days come, saith 
Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house 
of Israel . . . but this is the covenant that I will make 
with the house of Israel after these days, saith Jehovah : 
I will put my law in their inward parts and in their hearts 
will I write it; and I will be their GoD and they shall 
be my people: and they shall teach no more every one 
his neighbour, and every one his brother saying know 
Jehovah: for they shall all know me from the least of them 
unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah ; for I will forgive 
their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.” 
The great passage to be thoroughly appreciated must 
be read with its whole context. The entire section is the 


1 By universalism, in this connexion, is meant the principle of a universal 
religion, in which there is no difference before GoD between ‘‘ Jew and 
Greek ” (Gal. iii. 28, etc.). 

2 Hab. ii. 4. By ‘‘ faith” here is meant not merely ‘‘ integrity” but 
‘*trust in God.” ' See Riehm, AZ. Theol. § 74. 4. 

3 Jer. xxxi, 31 sqq. Aer ax, OCR. 


PROPHECY AND THE CAPTIVITY 23 


ripest fruit of the prophetic picture of a perfect kingdom 
in which GOD himself is King. In one verse! Jeremiah 
recalls Hosea’s prophecy of a Davidic monarchy,” but 
throughout the passage as a whole it is the direct reign 
of GoD in the hearts and lives of his people that is 
really in contemplation. It may be questioned whether 
the Christian conception of a kingdom of GOD upon 
earth has ever, even at its highest, done more than touch 
the height here attained. Certainly it has often done 
less. 

Ezekiel in one passage? partially reproduces the 
thought of Jeremiah. Generally speaking, however, 
universalism, though present, is ‘not prominent, in 
Ezekiel. Certainly in the earlier part of his prophecy | 
(ii—xxiv.) he shows that the existing kingdom and priest- 
hood # are not to be identified with the promised king- 
dom. The growth of the tender shoot to a goodly 
cedar, in whose shadow shall dwell “fowl of every 
wing,” ° reminds us of the mustard seed of the Gospels ; 
and the hope of restoration is expressly extended even 
to the most profligate of heathen cities.® 

In the second and reconstructive part (xxxiii.-end) 
we have the wonderful anticipation’ of the Parable of 
the Good Shepherd, the stony heart replaced by hearts 
of flesh, and above all the great prophecy of the bones,® 
which—once again in the spirit of Hosea—promises 
resurrection to Israel and Judah equally under the 


i Jer. xxx, 9. 2 See Briggs, Messianic Prophecy, p. 255 sqq. 

3 Ezek. xi. 16-20. a xxi 26, 2/7 

5 xvii. 22-24. I venture to dissent from Professor Charles’ view (p. 106, 
note) that ‘‘all fowl of every wing” cannot refer to the Gentiles. 

8 xvii, 53. 7 xxxiv, II-3I. 

8 xxxvi. 25-35, cf. xi. 16-20. 9 xxxvii. I-24. 


24 REGNUM DEI 


monarchy of David. This prophecy certainly extends 

far beyond mere restoration from exile ; it is a spiritual 

restoration above all that is promised. And the great | 
picture of a restored and reorganised Jewish Church- 

People culminates in the waters of life, which are to 

revive even the Dead Sea,! as those of Paradise watered 

the whole earth. 

We see then the seed of universalism steadily unfold- 
ing and striking root at the beginning of the Exile. 
And if we are to yield to the evidence which brings 
down to the period of exile large portions of our present 
book of Isaiah, the continuity of development is illus- 
trated by them in a remarkable way. National re- 
generation is to follow upon the overthrow of Babylon. | 
The faithfulness of Jehovah will bring into being a 
renewed Israel who will inherit the nations. The 
servant of Jehovah is not only to embody the ideal 
character which is to emerge from the long discipline of 
the nation, but he is also to be a light to the Gentiles.” 
And all culminates in a new Palestine, a very heaven on 
earth,? and in a renewal of the Heavens and Earth 
themselves. Here we have for the first time the germ | 
of a purely eschatological conception of the kingdom, 
eschatological in the sense of transcending altogether. 
the conditions of earthly existence, and reserved for a. 
future world. The eschatology of the Prophets is, so | 
far, almost wholly concerned with the life of the nation, 
and with what shall befall it in the last days. But the 
thought upon which we have just touched opens the 


1 Ezek. xlvii. 12, cf. xvii. 53. 
2 Isa, xlix. 14-23, li. 1-8, liv. 1 sqq., lvi. 6, 7, Ix. 3 Isa, Xxxv. 
4 Ixv. 17 sqq. See Charles, Zschatology, p. 122 sqq. 


<a 


PROPHECY AND THE'GAPTIVITY~ 25 


way to a fusion of the eschatology of the nation—the — 
distinctive theme of prophecy—with the eschatology of 
the individual, which had hitherto played no part in the 
accredited religious training of GOD’s people, though we 
can trace in popular belief and custom,! and occasionally 
in the language of prophets themselves, the existence of 
some belief at any rate in a personal existence continued 
after death. What we have specially to take note of 
at this period —that of the Exile, from Jeremiah to 
Haggai,—is a conception of a resurrection from death) 
as the privilege of the righteous individual—the direct 
germ of the distinctively Christian doctrine of a resur- 
rection from the dead. The comparison is instructive 
between the resurrection-language of Hosea? and that 
of the 26th chapter of Isaiah 3? which in some ways recalls 
it. In Hosea the resurrection is clearly and definitely 
that of the nation. In the later passage the thought of 
individual resurrection begins to make its presence felt, 
though the predominant thought is still—as in the 
great prophecy of Ezekiel—that of corporate revival. 
On the whole, we seem to detect a transition in its 
beginnings. We may say that the downfall of the 
Jewish State deepened and widened the hopes of the 
Nation by preparing the transition to the idea of a) 
kingdom of GOD in a new life, and therefore based 
upon the resurrection of at any rate the righteous 
dead. This has as its necessary correlative an increased 
concentration of interest upon individual righteousness 
and holiness, individual religion ; and this again centres 


1 See Charles, Zschatology, pp. 56, 62, 69-76, 125. 
2 Hos. vi. 2, xiii. 14. 
3 Isa, xxvi. 19 and context, see Charles, p. 126 sq. 


26 REGNUM DEI 


attention upon the inward and spiritual state as the 
ground of righteousness in God’s sight. 

We have noticed the characteristic declaration of 
this everlasting truth by Habakkuk as well as Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel and the rest. The kingdom to which these 
later prophets look forward is, accordingly, Jewish in 
its origin, but for the benefit of all mankind; Zechariah 
(if the chapters in question belong approximately to this 
period) insists} upon the religious attraction which will 
draw all theworld to Jerusalem,? Haggai* sees them pour- 
ing all their treasures into the house of Jehovah, and fierce 
as is the vengeance which Joel denounces upon those 
who have enslaved and sold the children of Jerusalem, 
there is no need to interpret more narrowly than did the 
Apostles his prophecy that the LORD in time to come 
would pour out his Spirit “upon a// flesh,” and that 
“whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall 
be saved.” 4 


1 Zech. viii. 23, xiv. 16. On the current view of the dates, see Charles, 
pp- 117, 121. 

? The “‘ Apocalypse” of Zechariah xii. 1-9, xiv. has features in common 
with Zephaniah (Charles, 98), Ezekiel xlvii. 1-12 (see Charles, 106), and 
with Joel iv. 18 (Charles, 118). See also Isa. xxxiv., xxxv. It represents a 
final capture of Jerusalem by the heathen, leading to a signal Theophanic 
Deliverance, followed by the gathering in of the Nations round a nucleus of 
believing Israelites. This final struggle has a long sequel in the history of 
Apocalyptic vision. See Charles, pp. 122 (Daniel), 177 (Sibyl), 191 (Enoch 
Ethiop.), 247 (Jubiles), 288 (4 Esdras), 348sq., 381. ‘‘ The doctrine of a 
final overthrow of living enemies—enemies of Israel according to Jewish 
belief, enemies of Gop and his true kingdom according to the more spiritual 
view of Christians—retained its place among the Last Things. .. even 
when the doctrine of a universal eternal judgment upon every human being, 
dead as well as living, was added” (see Stanton, Zhe Jewish and the Chris- 
tian Messiah, pp. 136 sq., 304-310). 

3 Hag. ii. 6-9. 

4 Joel ii. 32. Charles, p. 119, mainly on the ground of iii. 2 sqq., which 
I regard as inconclusive, insists upon a ‘‘particularist ” sense of this verse. 


JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 27 


The Exile then, or rather the experiences of the 
people which led to it, accompanied it, and followed 
it, prepared the faithful Israelites for the thought of (1) 
a kingdom of GoD within them, (2) a kingdom of GoD 
spiritual and world-wide, and (3) a kingdom of God in 
a life to come. 

(c) The subsequent history gives increased definite- 
ness and force to this hope, but at the same time 
forces it into a somewhat narrower channel. The 
ideal of the Exile seems at first sight to lose some- 
thing of the sanguine sympathy and world-wide range 
of its early promise. 

The hope of the Prophets is in fact attuned by Daniel 
to the faith of an oppressed people, struggling for inde- 
pendence, and conscious that the institutions distinctive 
of their religion are at stake in the struggle. Whether 
Daniel wrote under the present stress of the Maccabean 
struggle, or foresaw it in the minuteness of detail of 
which chap. xi. is the witness, that chapter is at any 
rate enough to show the situation to which the book 
is closely addressed. Faced with the alternative of 
apostasy or annhilation, the pious Israelite is to learn 
that stedfast loyalty to his GoD will come out trium- 
phant however the odds to which it is opposed. This, 
the common creed of prophecy, Daniel enforces by a 
new method,—new, that is, in its literary vehicle, but 
with its roots in the prophetic past. Daniel stands 
first in the great series of Apocalypses. Viewed as they 
formerly were from a distance, the visions of Daniel and 
of St. John towered aloft into the light of heaven, two 
solitary mountain peaks connecting heaven and earth. 
We have now been brought by the study of comparative 


28 REGNUM DEI 


material to a nearer point of view; we see that the 
giant masses are connected and surrounded by a long 
series of lesser heights; Apocalypses of Moses, of Eldad 
and Medad, of Elijah and Isaiah, of Enoch and Abra- 

V4 ham, of the XII Patriarchs, of Ezra and Baruch, and of 
Peter. Apocalypse is a type of literature as distinctive 
of Judaism as the drama is distinctive of the Greeks, 
and there are characteristics which are common to the 
whole Apocalyptic series. But it remains as true as 
formerly that in the whole range two peaks alone catch 
the sunlight of Inspiration. 

Apocalypse furnished the Jew with a philosophy of 
history in relation to religion and life. This had in a 
measure been the work of prophecy and of certain other 
classes of Hagiographa. But Apocalypse addressed 
itself directly and comprehensively to the history of the 
world, with the history of the Chosen People as its 
centre, viewed in the light of the ultimate purpose of 
GOD, and the final consummation of his Kingdom. 

In the book of Daniel three points claim our special 
attention. First the history of the world is reviewed 
twice over (chaps. ii., vii.); it culminates in a hostile 
power, apparently centred in an individual king (vii. 8, 
Viii. 9, 21, xi, all apparently identical in reference), which 
is to be overthrown by a divine, a perfect and an eternal 
kingdom, reigned over by “ one like unto a Son of Man,” 
ze. by the people of the saints of the Most High 
Secondly, this kingdom is inaugurated by judgment—a 
judgment with books? and penal fire for the enemies.? 


1 Dan. vii. 13. On the meaning of this see Driver, Davze/, p. 108. 
2 Dan. vii. 10, cf, xii. 2. 
* Dan, vi. 11, cf. Isa, Ixvi. fin.; Charles, pp. 132, 181. 


JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 29 


The resurrection which ushers in the judgment is still 
not conceived as universal; but it is individual, and it 
includes bad as well as good. Thirdly, the intensity 
and definiteness of the whole is undoubtedly gained at 
the expense of the older prophetic universalism. The 
nationalism of Danielis intense. But it is tempered by 
deep national contrition (ix. 3-19); and the seer has 
learned, before St. Paul was there to teach him, that 
“not all are Israel” who are of Israel’s seed.1 Those 
only who are written in the book are delivered, and not 
all endure to the end. Still, we certainly miss here 
the hope held out by the prophets for all mankind. 
True, there is nothing to forbid proselytism, but even 
that has no special mention, still less anything beyond 
it. But though this is so, the reign of the Son of Man 
is to include all mankind: “that all people and nations 
and language should serve him.” The possession of 
the kingdom is, indeed, reserved to the saints,—ze. to 
those against whom the tyrant has waged war,?—but it 
will—under conditions not defined—include all the 
world. There are two factors in the idea of the Messi- 
anic kingdom in the maturity of Jewish prophecy,—the 
idea of universal dominion, and the idea of a universal 
conversion of mankind to the worship of Jehovah—the 
political and the purely religious conception of the 
Divine kingdom on earth. The two are not mutually 
exclusive, but are two alternative aspects of one and the 


1 Dan. xii. 12, I sqq. 

2 Dan. vii. 18, 21, 22, Charles says, somewhat curtly, ‘‘ There is no 
Messiah.” This would imply, what is not the case, that a Messiah is not 
only not named, but excluded. And Enoch (B.c. 90, see Charles, p. 
214 sq., and Driver, /.c.) already understands the ‘‘Son of Man” in Dan. 
as the Messiah. 


30 REGNUM DEI 


same general expectation. In Daniel it must be said 

that the thought of universal dominion predominates 

over the other. The book contemplates conversion by 

means of dominion rather than dominion by means of 
conversion. And this gives the keynote for the hope of 
the Kingdom of GOD as we see it in possession of men’s 

minds at the coming of Christ. The circumstances of 
the times—of the last two centuries before Christ, made , 
dependence upon a heathen power more than ever in-— 
tolerable to the Jews. The Pharisees, who were above 

all else religious loyalists, became the spiritual leaders 

of the people. And in foreign dominion the Pharisees 

saw a direct menace against the purity of the national 

religion. Only, in the higher minds, the aspiration 

for political independence was strictly subordinated to 

that for religious purity. To be rid of hostile domina- 

tion was a means, not an end in itself. The aim was 

at bottom spiritual—the free and unhampered service 

of GoD: “ That we, being delivered from our enemies, 

might serve him without fear: in holiness and righteous- 

ness before him, all the days of our life.” 

This was the hope that had sustained the sons of 
Matthias and their followers in their devoted, and on 
the whole successful, struggle against Greek domination 
and influence in the second century before Christ; and 
the same hope, kept alive by the zeal of the Pharisees, 
sustained the faith of the people through the depress- 
ing days of Roman and Herodian power. 

The purity of motive which at first marks out the | 
family of the Maccabees begins indeed from a me 
early date to suffer from earthly alloy. The last sur- . 
viving brother, Simeon, united the office of High Priest 


JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 31 


with the functions, though not with the express title, of 
king. Under him priesthood practically merges in 
royalty. The indirect result is to increase the import- 
ance of the Scribe and the synagogue as factors in 
popular religion, at the expense of the temple and the 
priest. Simeon’s son, Hyrcanus the first, destroyed the 
Temple of Gerizim and vainly endeavoured to force the 
Samaritans into ecclesiastical conformity. With the 
Edomites he was more successful. Political aims 
and methods more and more displace the spirit in 
which the family had first attained their power. Judas 
Aristobulus I. the eldest son of Hyrcanus, formally 
assumed the style and title of king; his brother, 
Alexander Jannaeus,’ gradually relapsed into a mere 
head of the Sadducees. Involved in civil war and 
bloodshed, he left his widow to break with the Sadducees 
and rule justly during the minority of their sons. The 
rivalries of these sons, the weak devotee Hyrcanus II. 
and the more spirited Aristobulus, the intervention of 
Pompey, the bloody siege and capture of Jerusalem, and 
the profanation of the Temple, need not be recalled at 
length. As a result, Hyrcanus was left as High Priest 
but not as king. His granddaughter and sole surviv- 
ing representative, the unfortunate Mariamne, married 
the son of his Edomite major-domo Antipater, and by 
the favour of Mark Antony the monarchy founded upon 
the purest movement of intense religious zeal passed 
into the hands of Herod the Great. 

The Maccabean house had in fact followed up 
self-sacrifice by self-aggrandisement; they began as 


1 From his reign date the first known Jewish coins (B.C. 139). 
2 B.C, 106-79, 


32 REGNUM DEI 


defenders of a purely spiritual cause, but ended by 
usurping both the high-priesthood and the throne. In 
both ways they violated the principle of legitimate 
succession which had become so sacred in Jewish eyes ; 
they set it aside not for any more spiritual principle, 
but merely as political opportunists. No wonde: then 
that this relapse from their first purity cost them the 
whole-hearted support of the religious purists who had 
at first carried them to power. No consistent Pharisee 
could wholly accept a High Priest who did not re- 
present the legitimate line of Aaron, or tolerate, as an 
embodiment of his hope of the Messianic kingdom, a 
king who had no pretence to descent from David. 
That some did not share this attitude of strict protest, 
and rallied to the de facto dynasty, was a matter of 
course. Such is always apt to be the case, and the 
tendency accounts for the existence in gospel times of 
the party of Herodians. But it is not in such quarters 
that we must look for the hope of the Kingdom of GoD 
to which our Lord made his first appeal. The deeper 
religious feeling to which I have just referred found 
expression, in the very generation which ushered in the 
Christian era, in the Psalms of Solomon of which I will 
speak in the next Lecture. 


IV 


Meanwhile, let us briefly gather up the results of our 
survey of the Messianic expectation in its growth and 
modification to the close of O.T. times. The idea of 
the Kingdom of GOD took shape at first as a virtual 


philosophy of history, and a philosophy of history pre- 


JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 33 


supposes a philosophy of life and existence. In other 
words, faith in GOD himself lies behind the idea of 
his purpose for his rational creation—ze. behind the 
idea of a kingdom of Gop. A GOD who is not 
supreme over nature can have no effective purpose for 
beings whose bodily constitution and surroundings are 
at the mercy of nature’s forces. Now whatever re- 
arrangements may be necessary in the order of the 
documents of the O.T., or in the inferred order of 
religious development, it must, I think, be allowed that 
the idea of GOD presented to us in the Old Testament 
is distinctive from the first in this very respect, 
Anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language and 
thought there is,—limitations from which the mind, 
especially the popular mind, was only gradually cleared. 
That the personal name? of the national deity of one 
small nation, coupled with the early experiences in 
which that nation saw the arm of their national God, 
should have supplied the real and absolute point of 
contact between the human race and the Personal 
Existence, which underlies the boundless seen and 
unseen universe, and guides its every movement from 
the greatest to the least, is a thing hard at first sight 
to conceive. But when we see the fact in all its 
context, and realise that here is the beginning of every 
advance that religion has made in the world, the 
original starting-point of all Christian prayers and 
hopes and efforts, the fountain-head of all that is 

1 Justin Martyr, resting upon the LXX rendering kv’pioo for m7, makes 
it a proof of the purity of O.T. religion that, unlike heathen deities, the 
God of Israel lacked a personal name (@erdv bvoua, Afol. 1. x., cf. Cohort. 


ad Graec. xxi,). This of course cannot now be maintained, but the 
essential difference, as stated in the text, remains, 


3 


34 REGNUM DEI 


noblest in thought, word and action around us to-day, 
he would indeed be rash who should dismiss it as in- 
credible. If the sequel has been on such a momentous 
scale, we cannot doubt that some consciousness of what 
it meant was present in the minds that first received 
the tender seed of divine revelation. Men set out on 
the first stages of their journey toward the hope of 
Gop’s kingdom with a belief, implicit if not formally 
expressed, that the GOD in whom they trusted was 
able to perform all that he promised. The Israelites; 
then, from time immemorial, thought of their God in a 
way that implied a lofty and exclusive moral allegiance, 
—their earliest political unity was that of a kingdom of 
Gop. And then by a series of national experiences 
which we are partly able to trace in detail, and into 
which the institution of monarchy and the work of the 
prophets entered as leading factors, they were led to | 
realise how little their actual condition corresponded | 
with this great idea, and to look for a time to come, 
when the ideal would be realised in the future, as it) 
had never been in the past, of a righteous people 
reigned over by the GoD of all the universe. This 
future was conceived in the form of a perfect Kingdom, 
and its realisation hung upon the coming of a King in 
whose person the reign of GOD should find its final and 
absolute expression. In the great prophets who saw 
and followed the downfall of the Monarchy, this hope 
reached its most spiritual conception, and embodied a 
principle which left no room for the distinctive privilege 
of the Jew, but included all nations on a common basis 
of spiritual regeneration. Later on, in response to a 
crisis which called for concentrated and warlike action, 


- 


JEWISH ESCHATOLOGY 35 


this world-wide range of sympathy was somewhat 
narrowed, and the kingdom was figured in terms more 
distinctively Jewish. But the faith itself was the more 
intense and keen, and after burning now more dimly, 
now again brighter in the century and a half which 
preceded the birth of Christ, now once more popular 
expectation watched with feverish anxiety for the 
Person of the predestined King. It has been said of 
late, by one whose moral earnestness has left its mark 
upon this place, that the Messianic hope is a Jewish 
dream, the creation of national vanity, and without 
importance or interest to the modern mind As long 
as the best men and women, the very salt of human 
society, pray Thy kingdom come,—as long as the 
command, to seek first the Kingdom of GOD and his 
Righteousness, awakes in us the strongest aspirations 
for good of which our poor nature is capable, this will 
remain a singularly unsympathetic and shortsighted ~ 
pronouncement. Our Lord certainly set aside much 
that entered into the hopes and aspirations of his 
followers, and taught them much that seemed to give 
the lie to their most sacred convictions. But in doing 
so he was interpreting to them what their own prophets 
had taught,—the inmost secret of the hope they had 
faithfully in their ignorance kept alive, and to that 
hope he assured the future of the world. 
1 Goldwin Smith, Guesses at the Riddle of Existence (1897), p. 117 f. 





PE CEU RE: Ey 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT (I.) 





ne 


/ 
Kal oluat vocicOcar Oeod uév Bacidrelay rH waxaplay TF 
oracw Kai 7d Terayuevoy TaY cbpuy diahoyiopav* Xpicrod 
mpoisvras cwrnplovs Trois dxovover Abyous, Kal Ta puev 
Otxaoctynr kal Tov Roum Gv dperav' Aébyor yap Kal diKaLo 
Gcod, 










LECTURE: II 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT (I.) 


That we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies might serve 
him without fear: in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of 
our life. —LUKE i. 74. 

The kingdom of God is within you. —LUKE xvii. 21. 


THE Gospel of St. Luke, in many respects the most 
purely Greek of the writers of New Testament history, 
preserves, taken evidently by the author from some 
native Palestinian source, four canticles of marked 
beauty and loftiness, and of very marked correspondence 
with the poetical style of the Old Testament. This is 
specially true of the three longest of them, known to the 
modern Churchman as the Benedictus, the Magnificat, 
and the Nunc Dimittis. They appear to come to us 
from the very heart of the original Hebraic nucleus 
of the Christian Society, and from a time when the 
language and thoughts of the Old Testament still suffice 
for the expression of a devotion which was potentially 
Christian, but was exulting as yet but in the first 
daybreak of the Messianic advent. 

The Lucan canticles are the immediate historical 


1 Materials bearing on this question have been collected by Resch, the 
well-known compiler of Agrapha, in his Kindhetts-evangelium (Texte u. 
Untersuch, yol. x. part 5). His critical judgment is not quite equal to his 
enthusiasm, but the latter gives to his work the interest of a labour of love. 

39 


40 REGNUM DEI 


sequel of a collection of psalms, much inferior to them 
in poetical form, separated from them by that inde- 
finable but to us Christians surely very perceptible 
difference of spiritual savour which so often distin- 
guishes books outside the Canon from thosé included 
in it—the difference between Clement of Rome and 
St. Paul, of Ignatius from St. John. But allowing, as 
I think we must, for this difference, the Psalms of 
Solomon have many phrases and other characteristics 
in common with the canticles of St. Luke, and give 
them a historical context in which they take a natural 
and convincing place. In B.c. 65 the Romans had 
extinguished the Seleucid kingdom of Syria: the two 
rival claimants to the Jewish throne,! and a third party 
in protest against both, appeared at Damascus to seek 
the aid of the new sovereign power. But Aristobulus, 
the nominee of the Sadducees, was at the same time pre- 
paring to fight; as soon as he learned this, Pompey at 
once marched his legions upon Jerusalem. After a three 
months’ siege in which twelve thousand Jews perished, he 
took the Temple. The building had no special sacred- 
ness for the victorious Roman, and in curiosity rather 
than with the intention of trampling upon the most 
sacred feelings of the conquered, Pompey entered the 
Holy of Holies. Though, as the Psalms of Solomon 
expressly allow, the sin was one of ignorance,? the pious 
Israelite regards his tragic end as the vengeance of GOD. 


I delayed* not until GoD showed me that insolent one lying 
pierced upon the high places of Egypt... 

Even his dead body tossed upon the waves in great contempt : 
and there was none to bury him. 





1 See above, p. 31. 2 Ps. Sol. xvii. 15. 
3 ij, 30. Von Gebhardt suggests é@povrica for éxpbvica, 


PSALMS OF SOLOMON 4I 


This allusion, with others nearly as clear, appears to 
bring the completion of the Psalms of Solomon down 
later than B.C. 48, the year of Pompey’s death. The 
absence of any allusion to the reign of Herod the 
Great is good evidence that the collection was com- 
pleted before his accession in B.C. 39. The psalms 
are wholly Judean in reference and interest; they 
can hardly have originated outside Jerusalem, and it 
appears probable that their original language was 
Hebrew.! They breathe the spirit of the Pharisees 
who had sided with Hyrcanus I1.—these are “the 
just,” “the holy,” of the psalmists—against Aristobulus 
and his Sadducean followers, who appear as “the 
sinners,” “the t#-.nsgressors,” “the men-pleasers.” ? 
The Pharisees sided by preference with Hyrcanus, but 
in reality they rejected the claims of both princes to 
kingdom and high-priesthood alike. Of both factions 
alike they speak, when they say 3— 

“The holy things of God they took for spoil: and 
there was xo znheritor to deliver out of their hand,” and 
predict * that the true King, the Son of David, “shall 
thrust out the sinners from the inheritance.” The 
watchword of these psalms, directed both against the 
Roman overlordship and the Hasmonean monarchy, is 
“The LorpD is King.” 

“Blessed be the glory of the LORD: for he is our 


1 The above is the view of Ryle and James, and is substantially held by 
von Gebhardt (7. «. U. vol. xiii. 2) and most modern scholars. Of course 
the psalms may be by different authors, but there is no evidence for 
assigning them to different Zerzods. 

2 Ps. Sol. iv. 8, 21. This psalm gives a vivid sketch of the high-placed 
Sadducee. 

evil. 12; 

4 xvii. 26, cf. ver. 6, where see note of Ryle and James, 


42 REGNUM DEI 


King.” “O LorD, thou art our King henceforth and even 
for ever more, for in thee, O GOD, our soul exulteth.” 2 

The interest of the psalmists is not primarily political. 
Even the Roman rule is taken as a chastisement for 
the sins of the nation, expressly sent by God. This 
is in marked contrast with the spirit of the “ zealots” 
—the Pharisaic extremists of the next generation. 
The Messiah is to restore the kingdom to Israel, but 
not by fleshly weapons :— 

“For he shall not trust in horse and rider and bow, 
nor shall he multiply unto himself silver and gold for 
war, nor by many people? shall he gather confidence 
for the day of battle.” 

From the restored kingdom the “hypocrites” are to 
be shut out. It will include only those who fear and 
love God in sincerity. The latter will be marked with 
a sign, which will protect them in the Day of Judg- 
ment—uépa Kpicewo xupiov2 This judgment, which 
is apparently adopted from Daniel, seems to precede 
the coming of the perfect kingdom. The Kingdom is 
depicted especially in the 17th and 18th Psalms. It 
will consist of Israel, after the Romans are expelled 
and the Sadducees put down, not of Judah only, but 
of the dispersed tribes as well, and its seat will be 
at Jerusalem, its centre a restored temple worship. 
The Gentiles will bring in their tribute and will learn 
the true faith. The kingdom will be spiritual, holy, 
wise, and above all just. The King is—for the first 

1 Ps. Sol. v. 22, xvii. 1 (and cf. vers. 38, 51). 
2 xvii. 37. The MS. reading woddoto gives no sense. Ryle and James 
conjecture ‘‘ ships,” wAoloe ; Gebh. would insert Aaotc as above. 


3 juépa xuplov in Amos (supra, p. 19), huépa Kploewo in Judith xvi. 17. 
The phrase here seems to combine the two. 


PSALMS OF SOLOMON 43 


time, for Dan. ix. 25! is not an exception—called the 
Messiah or Christ :— 

“There will be no iniquity in his days in their 
midst, for all shall be holy, and their King is Christ 
the Lord.”2. “The LorpD cleanse Israel for the day 
when he shall have mercy upon them and shall bless 
them: even for the day of his appointing when he 
shall bring back*® his Christ. Blessed are they that 
shall be in those days: for they shall see the good 
things of the LorD which he shall bring to pass for 
the generation that cometh, under the rod of the 
chastening of the Lord Christ‘ in the fear of his 
God”® ... The Christ-King is moreover a son of 
David, he reigns as God’s vicegerent. The Christ of 
these psalms is man not God; a true son of David, an 
idealised, sinless, unworldly Solomon. To share in the 
joys of the kingdom, the faithful dead will be raised 
to life—this life will be eternal and joyful;® its 
realisation is in the “generation to come.”’ Coupled 


1 See Westcott, Epistles of St. John, p. 118. But perhaps Enoch, Sz. 
xlviii. 10, lii. 4, is an exception (Charles, Esch. p. 214). 

2 Ps. Sol. xvii. 36. 3 See Ryle and James’ note on the passage. 

* Or the Lord’s Christ. 5 Ps, Sol. xviii. 6-8. 

8 See iii. 16, xiii. 9, x. 9, xiv. 7, xv. 15. On the raising of the dead see 
Ryle and James, p. li. But Charles (Zschatology, p. 223 sq.) understands 
the kingdom in these psalms as not eternal, but earthly, and limited to 
the lifetime of the (human) Messiah ; whereas the faithful are to be raised 
to an e/erna/ life, z.e. not to life on earth, the scene of the Messianic reign. 
But while these psalms do not clearly define the relation of the Messianic 
reign to Eternity, I see nothing in them incompatible with the idea ofa 
reign eternal on earth (on which see below, p. 53, note 3, and Charles, 
pp. 82, 83, 188, 189, 230, 288, etc.); if the psalmist’s eschatology is thus 
far indefinite, Charles’ argument hardly holds good. 

7xv. 14. The expression 6 aldy 6 épxduevoo does not occur in these 
psalms, but the zdea of an ‘‘age to come” (whether to be inaugurated by 
the Messiah’s advent or to follow upon his Reign) is presupposed (see 
below, p. 52, n.). 


a REGNUM DEI 


with this is the doctrine of the Day of Judgment, 
referred to above, which is still conceived in the un- 
developed form which meets us in the book of 
Daniel. 

On the whole, as compared with Daniel, our psalms 
show a distinct limitation of view. As in Daniel, a 
definite historical crisis is the theme, but it is treated 
in and for itself, and not as part of a scheme of 
universal history. Our psalmist looks passionately 
for a “son of David”; Daniel looks for a “Son of 
Man.” The Psalms of Solomon are didactic but not 
apocalyptic; they bring very definite religious and 
moral principles to bear upon their subject, and they 
comprise an eschatology, but hardly a philosophy of 
history. Even the familiar Hebraic thought of “the 
world to come” is presupposed rather than expressly 
appealed to! It is presupposed, in so far as the 
Advent of the Christ-King is to bring about a perfect 
kingdom on earth, beyond which the prophetic vision 
of the psalmists does not travel. The following 
passage contains the express phrase “ Kingdom” or 
“Reign of God” in the sense which furnishes the 
starting-point for our Lord’s teaching :— 

“OQ Lord thou art our King henceforth and even 
for evermore ... and the kingdom of our God is 
unto everlasting over the heathen in judgment. Thou 
O LorD didst choose David to be king over Israel and 
didst swear unto him, touching his seed for ever, that 
his throne should not fail before thee. . . . Behold O 
LorD and raise up unto them their King, the son of 
David, in the time which thou O GOD knowest, that he 


1 See previous note. 


PSALMS OF SOLOMON 45 


may reign over Israel! thy servant; . . . and he shall 
not suffer iniquity to lodge in their midst; and none 
that knoweth wickedness shall dwell with them... . 
He shall judge the nations and the peoples with 
the wisdom of his righteousness. Selah... . And 
there shall be no iniquity in his days in their midst, 
for all shall be holy, and their King is the Lord 
Christ.” 2 

The eternity of the kingdom comes from Dan. vii. 27, 
“and his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,’ com- 
pare Ps. cxlv. 13, “Thy kingdom is an everlasting 
kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all 
generations.” The imagery of Ps. Ixxii. is apparent 
in the universality and beneficence ascribed in detail 
to the Messiah’s reign, and the Sibylline Oracles re- 
echo or anticipate * this feature, with a clear reference 
to the house of David— 

Baowela peyiorn 
*AOavarov Bacidjoo én’ avOpwroior aveirar 
"Eort b€ tic Pua} Bacwqioc, jo yévoo eara 
"Amraorov . . . 
Kal rére b€ eeyépet Baowdniov cia aidvac 
Ildvrac ém’ avOpmrove. 

The coming of Christ, therefore, found in exist- 
ence a cycle of beliefs and hopes concerning the 
Kingdom of GOD, founded upon the Old Testament, 
and echoed in the literature current among the Jewish 
people outside‘ the official schools. These beliefs and 
hopes took shape, no doubt, to many minds as crude 
and political aspirations. But among the stricter 


M@r Ps, Sol. vy. 21, 2 xvii, I-36. 

3 Sib. ili. 47, 288, 766 (see Ryle and James, p. 129). The passage is 
dated by Charles (p. 176) before 100 B.c. 

*Stanton, Zhe Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 39 sqq: 


46 REGNUM DEI 


Pharisees—or at least the more spiritually-minded of 
them, they comprised the following elements :— 

I. Israel was ideally the kingdom of GoD, and 
destined to become really what it already was in idea. 

2. Israel as it was was not the kingdom of God, for 
it contained unworthy elements. The existing faithful 
Jews are the zuclews of the future kingdom. . 

3. The future kingdom was to be on earth, with \ 
Jerusalem as its seat and centre It was variously 
conceived as (a) eternal, or (0) of limited duration. | 

4. It was to include the faithful who are dead, and 
will be raised again. 

5. It was to be inaugurated by a Day of Judgment, 
which appears to be identified with the day of the 
Messiah’s. appearance.® 

6. It was to be an embodiment of all elements of 
national well-being—social, ethical, spiritual. 

7. It was to embrace all peoples, who would come 
to worship at Jerusalem. 


II 


It will aid us to pass at once, for the sake of con- 
trast, to the generation which preceded: the final and 
hopeless destruction of the Jewish state, and with it of 
all hopes which involved its continuance under however 
purified a form. A band of teachers had arisen to 
whom no such catastrophe could come as a surprise, 
but who still hoped for and preached the Kingdom of 
GOD. 


2'Ps.\Sol. Ve2%e 2 xvii. 33-55. 
3 xv, 13-15, comparing xvii. 24-31, 41-51. 


SAINT PAUL 47 


Even after the Risen Lord had during the great 
forty days spoken to his apostles of the things per- 
taining to the Kingdom of God,! they can still ask 
him: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the 
kingdom to Israel?” But the Ascension, and Pentecost 
in its train, make it plain that the Restoration is not 
yet. | The hope of it is now centred upon the promised 
Return of Christ, with which? the Kingdom of God is 
primarily associated in the Apostolic age. | The 
Apostles are at first rather concerned to win their 
Jewish hearers to the allegiance of Jesus as the Christ- 
King than to define the nature of his kingdom. But, 
as hitherto the popular hope of the Kingdom had hung 
entirely upon the Advent of the King, a change in 
that hope was inevitable, in view of a change in the 
view of the Advent itself To the Christian, there was 
no longer one advent only, longed for as future. He 
still passionately looked for a future advent which 
would bring the Kingdom of GOD with Power. But 
his confidence in its coming now largely rested on the 
certainty of an Advent already accomplished in fact. 
To convince a Jew that Jesus was indeed the Christ, 
was to convince him that in a sense the Kingdom of 
GOD was already come, and present on earth. 


1 Acts i. 3-6. 

2" Avdyuéio (Acts iii. 20) correlative with daoxardcracis (752d. 21) and 
therefore with droxa@icrdveo (i. 6). The ‘‘refreshing” is the Messianic 
** Regeneration” which (Mal. iv. 6) is associated with the coming of 
Elijah, and therefore (Matt. xvii. 11|| Mark ix. 12) with the Baptist; but 
(as he is ‘‘not the Christ” but his forerunner) finally only with the Return 
of Christ. The antecedent of dy in Acts iii. 21 is doubtful. Probably it is 
xpbvwv, mavrwy (which, however, Dalman, Worte Jesu, 146, makes the 
antecedent to dv) being absolute, as in Matt. xvii. 11 (cited above). See 
also Matt. xix. 28 (radvyyevecia) and below, p. 51. A somewhat different 
view is taken of the passage in Charles, Eschatology, p. 373 sq. 


~ 


48 REGNUM DEI 


This in itself meant the abandonment of much that 


had hitherto entered into the web and fibre of the 


popular expectation of GOD’s Kingdom,—except in so 
far as all such realistic elements were capable of being 
transferred from the kingdom of the First Advent to 
the kingdom of the Second. That this was to some 
extent the case, the sequel appears to show. But the 
whole change of which I speak must have been some- 
what gradual. Apart from the slowness with which 
men habitually realise the full consequences of acquired 
knowledge, we must remember that it was long before 
the impossibility of an entire conversion of Israel be- 
came manifest, and with it the destination of the 
gospel for all nations without distinction or condition. 
The twelve Apostles are to evangelise the twelve tribes, 
and they will not have accomplished this task until the 
Son of Man be come.! His coming will be hastened ? 


by the repentance of Israel. Prophecy had of course, 
prepared them for a hardened and intractable section, \ 


—but apart from these, to work for the kingdom is to 
work for the conversion of Israel; to the Christian- 


Jewish mind, the conversion of the Gentiles is to bring — 
them into a Christendom still loyally obedient to the 


law of Moses. 

It will be needless in this place to trace through the 
earlier section of the Acts the process of gradual de- 
judaisation which paves the way for St. Paul. It has 
been commonly objected to the chapters in question 
that St. Peter and the minor characters of the story 
are unhistorically made to forestall the distinctive work 


1 Matt. x. 23, see also Mark ix. I. ? Acts iii, 19 sq. (87wo), 
3 Acts xv. I sqq. and especially xxi. 21, 


SAINT PAUL 49 


of St. Paul by the removal, as in the case of Cornelius, 
of Jewish restrictions which he was the first to set 
aside.\. But when we remember that in fact great 
historical changes do not obey in every detail the strict 
logical succession which critical analysis rightly exhibits 
in the process as a whole, and when we take just 
account of the conditions under which each important 
forward step is recorded as having occurred, we shall I 
think be struck with the general consistency of the 
narrative and its harmony with what the historical 
circumstances of the time justify us in regarding as 
probable. Thus much I have been obliged to say of a 
period of which, especially for the purpose of this 
enquiry, our materials for knowledge are the slightest, 
/—in order that we may realise that great and dis- 
_tinctive as was the work of St. Paul it was not wholly 
without antecedent developments which prepared for it. 

In St. Paul’s treatment of the idea of the Kingdom 
of GoD three things strike us at once. (1) The 
complete exclusion of the realistic eschatology of a 
visible reign of the Messiah upon earth;! (2) the 
twofold application of the idea, corresponding to the 
two Advents of Christ; and (3) a distinction, dis- 
cernible side by side with the fundamental unity of 
the two, between the Kingdom of Christ and the 
Kingdom of GoD.? 

To begin with the second and fundamental point, , 
St. Paul’s primary conception of the Kingdom of Gop © 
is eschatological. In itself, it is nothing short of the 
final consummation of the divine purpose for the 
rational creation, GOD all in all. For the individual 


1 Pp. 52, 54, note. See NS iSqs 
4 


50 REGNUM DEI 


Christian, it stands as the goal of life and endeavour. 
Like the correlative phrase Sdfa tod Qcod, it connotes, 


with infinite richness of meaning, all that is implied in 


the word “Salvation.” In this Kingdom and Glory 


redeemed mankind is to share, “to be glorified to- ~ 


gether” with Christ, “to reign with” him. This sense 
meets us in St. Paul’s earliest and latest Epistles, “ that 
ye should walk worthily of GOD, who calls you into 
his kingdom and glory »—“ that ye should prove worthy 
of the kingdom of GoD, for which ye also suffer ”— 
“or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit 
the kingdom of Gop ”——“ this I say brethren that flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of Gop.”?. 

But the Kingdom of GOD is not only future. It is 
present here and now as the sphere of all the work of 
an Apostle and of all the life of a Christian. “The 
kingdom of GOD,” he writes with direct references to 
present concerns, “is not in word but in power ”— 
Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus Justus are his “ fellow- 
workers for the kingdom of GOD,” ze. in building up 
the body of Christ now.? 

The two senses are distinct, and yet one. They are 
linked by such a passage as Col. i. 11, where in a 
context coloured by hope of the eternal inheritance St. 


Paul speaks of himself and his readers as already trans- — 


lated by GOD from the power of darkness into the king- 
dom of his dear Son. That kingdom then exists to 


11 Cor. iv. 8; Rom. viii. 17, and elsewhere. 

2 1 Thess. ii. 12; 2 Thess. i. 5; 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10, and Gal. v, 21; Eph. 
v. 53 1 Cor. xv. 50. 

3 Gcod otvepyo, I Cor. iii. 9, cf. 2 Cor. vi. 1; see also I Cor. iv. 20, 
cf. Rom. xiv. 7; Col. iv. 11. On this sense see also Sanday in Journal of 
Theological Studies, July 1900, p. 483. 


Sao 


SAINT PAUL st 


St. Paul already wherever man is in a state of salvation, 
wherever Christ is king. ‘But its complete realisation 
is still hindered by men’s sin and the hardness of their 
hearts, by the activity of mysterious powers which are 
still permitted to range themselves in hostility to GOD 
and his people, and by the still more mysterious 
corruption which attaches to flesh and blood, and to 
all created things, which, as St. Paul holds, is the 
accompaniment of man’s fallen condition, and with 
man awaits the hope of final restoration The reign 
of Christ, which began potentially with his coming in 
the likeness of sinful flesh, and the condemnation of 
sin in the flesh which that coming zso facto involved, 
dates in its actual exercise from the resurrection and 
exaltation of Christ. By the former he is declared to 
be the Son of GOD with power, by the latter he takes 
the preordained place of the Messiah at the right hand 
of GOD, whence he reigns until all the Enemies, whose 
power retards the consummation of his Kingdom, are 
placed under his feet. This subjugation of the Enemies 
is the specific work of Christ’s Mediatorial reign at 
Gop’s right hand, and it culminates in the Return of 
Christ which delivers the sons of GOD, and with them 
the whole creation, from the bondage of corruption 
and death, and directly ushers in “the end,” the re- 
delivery of the kingdom to the Father, the perfect and 
absolute Kingdom of Gop.? In the passage, familiar 
to us all from its use at the Burial of the Dead, which 
is St. Paul’s only express utterance on this mysterious 
theme, the contrast with the Jewish eschatology of the 
Psalms of Solomon is extraordinarily sharp. The 


1 Rom. viii. 20. = Cf, Rom. viii. 21 with 1 Cor. xv. 26. 


52 REGNUM DEI 


“world to come”+4—the eternal Kingdom of Gop 
which will follow when all earthly history has run its 
course—which hardly enters into the view of the Jewish 
psalmist, is clearly placed before us by St. Paul as the 
ultimate goal. Again, the relation between its in- 
auguration and the second coming of Christ is so close, 
so direct, that all thought of an earthly and visible 
reign of Christ, begun by his second coming and 
ended by the Redelivery, is manifestly excluded.? 
. Thirdly, the kingdom of Christ as Mediator and 
Messiah synchronises, in St. Paul’s thought, with the 
interval between the First Advent and the Second. 
With the consummation of its functions, with the final 
deliverance of GOD’S creation, the kingdom of Christ is 
merged in the perfect Kingdom of GoD,’ that GoD may 
be all in all. 

The history of the world, therefore, from the Resur- 
rection of Christ,—virtually from his coming in the 
flesh, is viewed by St. Paul as the Reign of Christ. 
Wherever that reign is effective, there is Christ’s king- 


1 Not in so many words (except perhaps Eph. i. 21, r@ méAXovti). St, 
Paul it is true often speaks of 6 aldy od7oc, but he contrasts with it not 


6 a. 6 épxduevoc, but the ‘kingdom of God.” (See Dalman, Worte Jesu, 


p. 120.) 

2 The contrary view has been maintained, e.g. (to mention very dis- 
similar writers), by Godet and by Schmiedel in their notes on 1 Cor. 
xv. 24, and by St. John Thackeray, St. Pau/, p. 120 sqq. But the view in 
the text is capable of something like conclusive proof, and I am glad to 
find myself here confirmed by the disinterested judgment of Professor 
Charles (Eschatology, pp. 387-396). 

3 This must be carefully distinguished from the doctrine of Marcellus of 
Ancyra, against which the words of the ‘‘ Nicene” Creed are directed : 
‘‘Whose kingdom shall have no end.” The system of Marcellus (see 
Nicene and Post-Nicene Library, series 2, vol. iv., Athanasius, p. Xxxvi) 
involved the return of the Son into the Being of the Father, so that His 
distinct personal existence was to cease, —a thought wholly foreign to St. Paul. 


SAINT PAUL 53 


dom ; outside his kingdom lie sin and Satan, and all 
that St. Paul would include under the head of “ Enemies.” 
The Apostle looks, as many passages of his Epistles 
show us, for a final catastrophe of all these “ enemies ” 
at the return of Christ. But meanwhile this is being 
prepared for by the increase of Christ’s kingdom, both 
in its extent and in its intensity, through the Christian 
centuries; by every victory of good and every form 
of warfare against evil. 

But let us take note, before passing on, of St. Paul’s 
distinction between the Kingdom of GoD and of Christ. 
On the one hand the distinction is real. It corresponds 
to the distinction, faint but discernible in contemporary 
Jewish thought, between the Messianic age and the 
“age to come.” In the Fourth Book of Esdras and in 
the Apocalypse of Baruch, and in some Rabbinical 
utterances, a clear’ distinction is made between the 
two,” the resurrection of the faithful being placed at 
the beginning of Messiah’s earthly reign; and that 
reign has a definite conclusion® which is followed by 
the birth of the new world. But another view made 


1 2 Thess. ii. ; 1 Cor. xv. 24. On the antecedents of this factor in the 
Apostle’s eschatology, see above, p. 26, note 2. 

* Stanton, pp. 315 and 317 note; Dalman, Worte Jesu, p. 123. 

$ The Psalms of Solomon, as we have seen (p. 43, note 6), are indefinite 
as to the duration of the Messiah’s earthly reign; but in the Apocalyptic 
and Apocryphal literature the thought of a Reign of limited duration 
on earth is widely held; ¢.g. Ethiopian Enoch xci.-civ. (Charles, Esch. 
pp- 201-204) ; Szd. Orac. iii. 1-62 (ibd. 226); /ubdiles and Assumpt. Mos. 
(tbid. 248, 250); Slavon. Enoch (zb2d. 261); Afoc. Baruch (ibid, 270-275) ; 
4 Ezra (ibid. 286). This idea, possibly the outcome of the disillusionment 
of the Maccabean period (Charles, p. 172), is the historical root of the 
belief in a Millennium (on which see below, Lect. IV.). The Messianic 
age is conceived of in most of the above-cited passages as giving place to 
the new world, and as closed by the universal judgment and the final 
destruction of evil. 


54 REGNUM DEI 


the Advent of Messiah the immediate inauguration of 
the world to come. Now St. Paul appears to adopt 
both views,—the former with reference to our Lord’s 
First Advent, the latter being applied to the Second.! 
Again, as we shall see, the same distinction may be 
traced in some words recorded of our Lord himself. 

On the other hand the distinction between the 
Kingdom of GOD and of Christ is not complete. The 
one is the process, the other the complete result. 
Perfection is, throughout the Bible, the note of the 
Kingdom of GOD; the kingdom of Christ has perfection 
as its goal, but its mediatorial character, the gradual 
conquest of sin in the individual heart, the gradual 
conversion of men from the power of darkness to the 
kingdom of Christ,—the fact that the powers of evil 
are still at work, and that corruption still holds in 
bondage the whole realm of material life, marks the 
kingdom of Christ with imperfection. It zs the King- 
dom of GOD in its idea,—in potency and in promise ; 
but visibly and openly not yet. This is St. Paul’s 
well-known paradox of the Christian life. Our whole 
task as Christians is to become what we are. The 
Christian is, in one sense, now what he is truly to be 
hereafter,—the son or child of Gop. The assurance of 
access to GOD, the spirit of sonship, the filial spirit, the 
Holy Spirit, which is vouchsafed to him in this life, is 


1 This appears to be more correct than to say, with Professor Charles 
(Zsch. p. 390), that in 1 Cor. xv. 27 sq., the Apostle conceived of Christ’s 
Reign as temporary and ended by the Judgment, but afterwards abandoned 
this view. But St. Paul of course associates the Resurrection of the Just 
év Ty twapovolg avrod (1 Cor. xv. 23) with the Second Advent and with 
the Redelivery. The language of the passage can hardly be harmonised 
with the doctrine of two resurrections (szfra, p. 52, note 2). 


SAINT PAUL 55 


an instalment—dppaBov—of the destiny promised to 
him hereafter. That which is to come at the end so 
facto exists now, but in growth and therefore in im- 
perfection ; “it doeth not yet appear ””—it is held down 
in bondage,! its glory is veiled. And what is true of 
the individual is true of the kingdom into which he is 
called. ’The kingdom of Christ is the Kingdom of 
GOD in reality, but in the making. It is an instal- 
ment of the perfect which is to come; imperfect as an 
instalment is, but a sure pledge of the perfect kingdom 
for which we look. 

St. Paul nowhere expressly states the relation be- 
tween the Kingdom of GoD and the visible society of 
Christians—the Church of Gop. But from the above 
points of his teaching it is possible to bring his 
doctrine on the two subjects into relation. Obviously 
the relation is close. 

If what has just been said of the individual Christian 
life represents the mind of St. Paul, then the Christian 
brotherhood is necessarily, in respect of its true mem- 
bers, the sphere of Christ’s reign—the kingdom of 
Christ on earth. That kingdom finds its visible 


1 “The bondage of corruption.” 0épa isin St. Paul a purely physical, 
not an ethical, conception (see Lightfoot on Gal. vi. 8); his use of it may 
be indirectly derived from its use by Aristotle as the correlative of yéveowc, 
both alike characterising the phenomenal in contrast to the mp&rov kwodv 
(Phys. v. 1, vili. 6, etc.). But St. Paul regards physical @@épa as the 
‘vanity to which the creature is subjected in consequence of sin (Rom. 
viii. 20, cf. v. 12 sqq.). The dependence of physical death (even before 
man’s appearance on earth) upon sin, and the liberation of the xrlo.e from 
its vanity as a result of the final redemption of man from sin, are conceptions 
which modern physical knowledge renders doubly difficult, but they are 
unquestionably factors in St. Paul’s view of existence. The difficulty is 
however part of the wider problem of the relation of matter to spirit, and, 
I would add, of time to reality. (Cf. Illingworth, Divine Zmmanence, p. 
116.) 


56 REGNUM DEI 


expression in a society of men united by the bond of 
personal faith, and living a heavenly life+ And this 
the Church is in its essential idea. The “Body of 
Christ”—and the “Kingdom of Christ” are expres- 
sions which suggest somewhat different ideas, but 
whether they cover precisely the same field or not, 
their centre is at least one and the same. And if 
there is close correlation between the two conceptions, 
—if without going outside St. Paul’s world of thought — 
we may say—not perhaps “the kingdom of Christ is/ 
the Church” but certainly—‘“the Church is the king- 
dom of Christ,” then according to St. Paul the Church 
is the pledge and latent germ of the Kingdom of Gop 
in the full and final sense. But St. Paul never expressly 
equates the two ideas, and for this—closely related as 
they obviously are, there must be a good reason. The 
phrase éxxAnola tod Xpictod (or Oeov) does not, as 
directly as 7 Baowrela tod Xpictovd (or Oeod), suggest, 
what to St. Paul is of vital moment, the effective reign 
of Christ. The Church is becoming the kingdom of 
Christ,,-—and the Church in her glory to come, the 
évdokoo éxxAnola, would seem to rise to the full height 
of the Perfection of Gop’s kingdom.’ But the Kingdom 
of GOD appears to range, in its ultimate completeness, 
as wide as all creation; and although the Church plays 
a mysterious though indispensable part in the consum- 
mation of this final reality, it would be going beyond 
St. Paul’s language, and his apparent thought, to speak 
of the Church even in her glory in the world to come, 


1 Phil. iii. 20; Eph. ii. 6, cf. i. 20. 


2 Yrordooerat, Eph. v. 24, cf. 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28. 7 


3 Eph. v. 27. 4 Supra, p. 55, note, and next note. 


aie ee 
apr, 


ye 


SAINT PAUL 57 


as fully coextensive! and convertible with the Kingdom 
of Gop. 

The kingdom of Christ, then, is partially distin- 

-guishable in St. Paul from the Kingdom of GoD, as the 
means from the end, or the imperfect and growing from 
the mature and perfect realisation of the Divine Will. 
The completion of the one is the beginning of the 
other, Christ sits at GoOD’s right hand until? he has 
made his Enemies his footstool. 

Christ is reigning now, and the Church on earth re- 
presents his visible reign over sinful men. To claim 
perfection for the Church as she is on earth, or on the 
other hand to attempt to realise ideal perfection by the 
ruthless and premature extirpation of every person and 
thing that offends, are two opposite, and, as experience 
has shown, fatally easy directions in which we may 
drift away from St. Paul’s conception of the kingdom of 
Christ. 

Christ is reigning now, and as each conquest over sin 
and evil brings his Enemies under his footstool, his reign 


1 Indirectly we approach most nearly to this identification in Eph. i. 22. 
In ver. 10 the Apostle has spoken of the destined summing up of all things 
in Christ ; here he speaks of Christ as 7//img (‘‘ with himself,” md.) all 
things (z.e. heavenly, earthly, and xavax@éma), The Church is the 
®Ajpepa—almost ‘‘the instrument.’—of this purpose. Christ’s purpose 
is to ‘‘fill all things” with himself; he must first, as a step toward this 
end, fill the Church. The Church is therefore (ideally, for the uérpov rie 
jAtxlac Tod wr., Eph. iv. 7, is not realised as yet) the rA7jpwya—vessel or 
vehicle, Col. ii. 1o—of Christ, and as such carries out his work for man 
(and so for all creation, Rom. viii.). All creation is in its ongin and 
destiny (Eph. i. 10) Gop’s kingdom. Meanwhile the Church is the 
visible embodiment (cua, ver. 23) of Christ, and in proportion as she is 
**filled” with him she is bringing about the supreme end. Of that end, 
the ultimate Kingdom of Gop, the &dotoo éxxAnola will be a part only, 
but the central part. (See Lightfoot, Co/oss. p. 261). 

* On the ‘‘ Enemies” see above, p. 53, note 1 ; and below, pp. 109, IIo. 


58 REGNUM DEI 


on earth advances, and the Church grows nearer to the 
stature of the Kingdom of GoD. 

Lastly, we must, before leaving St. Paul, ask a ques- 
tion which will recur! when we consider the teaching 
of our Lord, a question of no small importance for our 
general conclusion. Does St. Paul, in speaking of the 
@cod Bacideia, mean by that phrase the kingdom in the 
sense of the vealm over which GOD rules, or in the sense 
of the vezgn exercised by him? Is the Kingdom of 
Christ and of GOD thought of by him primarily as a 
Society, or as a state of things? Our account of St. 
Paul’s conception of the kingdom has been gathered 
from his Epistles without any conscious reference to this 
question ; but in the result, the Reign of Christ now, and 
the perfect Reign of GOD all in all hereafter, have asserted 
themselves irresistibly in the most prominent place. 
This result is confirmed if we remind ourselves of the 
sense in which the words were used in the pre-Christian 
Jewish schools in which St. Paul had been trained, and 
whose language would in this as in so many other 
respects in the first instance colour his own. On the 
whole the evidence seems to support the conclusion that 
there too the thought of the reign of GOD is primary. 
This does not exclude the thought of the realm; for we 
can as little have a reign with no kingdom to govern as 
a kingdom without one who reigns. But “an Oriental 
‘kingdom’ is now as of old not a body politic in our 
sense, but the rule of a person embracing a particular 
region ” the thought of the king is uppermost, that of 
the subjects secondary. The Old Testament passages 
reviewed in the first Lecture anticipate the N.T. thought 

1 See below, p. 98sq., and Lect. V. 2 See Dalman, Worte Jesu, p. 77. 





SAINT PAUL 59 


of the Kingdom of GOD in so far as they speak of 
Jehovah as King. This is least evident in Daniel, but 
even there the “ kingdom ” is the everlasting reign of the 
Most High, which he gives to his saints to share as their 
possession, The society or body politic in Daniel and 
in the Psalms of Solomon consists of Israel purified 
and transformed—in a word of the saints. The kingdom 
is the effective reign of GoD through his Messiah, a 
blessed and perfect condition which gives happiness to 
all who are privileged to come under it. This is of a 
piece with the language of the Jewish schools, in which, 
as a recent careful enquirer assures us, “ kingdom of 
GoD” means always “ divine rule” and never “ divinely 
governed state.”1 This does not take away from 


the realm of the Messiah’s government the title | 


Kingdom of Gop ;—but it does define more accur- 
ately its right to that title. It is the Kingdom of 
GoD because in it the Reign of GOD is effective and 
real, and in proportion as this is less or more truly the 
case. 

In St. Paul, we have already travelled very far from 
the idea of the Kingdom of GoD which, in the generation 
before Christ, was expressed in the Psalms of Solomon. 
All idea, as we have seen, of a visible earthly reign of 
the Messiah, all thought of a visible Hebraic kingdom 
or of Jerusalem as its centre, every shred of nation- 
alism, has disappeared. On the other hand the eschato- 
logical side of Jewish hope has been deepened, spiritual- 
ised and strengthened. The Christian é««dXnoia, in 
which there is “no room” for Jew, Greek, Barbarian or 
Scythian, supersedes the brotherhood of “Israel after 

1 See Dalman, Worte Jesu, p. 70. 


} 





60 REGNUM DEI 


the flesh,” the Divine Christ the human King-Messiah, 
the glories of the earthly Christ-kingdom give place 
to the redemption of the body and the unveiling of the 
sons of GOD; the resurrection of the departed saints to 
share the delights of the Messiah’s reign melts into the 
thought that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom 
of GOD, neither does corruption inherit incorruption. | 
And this great transformation of Jewish thought has 
not failed to transform the whole present aspect of the 
world and of life. That GoD may be served on earth 
“without fear, in holiness and righteousness,” it is no 
longer necessary that a particular nation should be de- 
livered from its overhanging doom. The old Israel, to 
St. Paul, no longer exists ; a new Israel, the true descent 
of Abraham, has taken its place.' And as the old 
Israel in reality consisted of the faithful remnant only, 
and that Remnant, though hard to recognise, was the 
present embodiment of the Kingdom that was to be,— 
so now the Church of Christ. Wherever Christ has 
disciples, wherever he reigns and lives in man, there is 
the Kingdom of GOD on earth, growing, being built up, 
ever tending to what it shall be. The work of the 
Christian Society as a whole,—and not only that but 
every good or even lawful and necessary object pur- 
sued or act done by the Christian—whether he eats or 
drinks, or whatever he puts on,—is an activity of the 
Kingdom of Gop. 

No transition could be more abrupt than that from 
the Psalms of Solomon to St. Paul. But the transition 
was not wholly, nor in reality chiefly, his work. He 


1 Gal. vi. 16. The contrast between the two,—between the true and the 
“empirical” Israel, underlies the argument of Rom. ix., xi. 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 61 


teaches and writes as the interpreter—as he himself 
says the “ slave ”—of Jesus Christ. 

And we now have to see that as a preacher of the 
Kingdom of Gop he interprets truly—that the transition 
from the Psalms of Solomon to St. Paul is explained 
by the difference + between the hope which Christ found 
in being and that hope as he retaught it, purified and 
transformed, to his disciples. 


III 


The tradition of Christ's teaching was the possession 
of the Jewish Christians. It was committed to writing 
in two widely differing forms, first, about the time of 
the destruction of Jerusalem, in the triple record of the 
synoptic Gospels ; secondly, about the time of Domitian, 
with marks of long and deep reflexion, in the Gospel of 
St. John. It will be necessary for the present to reserve 
what is to be said of the latter. We deal first with the 
synoptic tradition,? and for our purpose it will be un- 
necessary to deal, except incidentally, with the mutual 
relations of the first three Gospels. 

When Jesus begins his ministry by the simple an- 
nouncement, accompanied by no definition, that the 


1Cf, Titius, WZUiche Lehre v. der Selighéit (1895), part 1, p. 177 sq. 

? The problem of the zfs¢ssima verba of our Lord is placed on a fruitful 
basis of enquiry by Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, Leipz. 1898. Allowing that 
the first z77¢/ex form of the synoptic record may have been Greek, he starts 
from the fact that our Lord’s converse with his disciples must have been in 
the vernacular Aramaic of Galilee, a fact that lies behind the tradition pre- 
served by Eusebius as to the original language in which the “‘ Oracles” of 
Christ were written down (pp. 46-48). The recovery of the ifs¢sséma 
verba therefore depends upon successful retranslation from Greek into 
Aramaic, The dialectic difference between Galilean and Judean does not, 
Dalman concludes, seriously affect the security of the result (p. 65). 





62 REGNUM DEI 


appointed time was fulfilled, and that the Kingdom of 
GoD was at hand,! we are bound to infer that he uses 
the words, to begin with, in the sense in which his 
hearers understood them.2 What that sense was, we 
have learned in part from Daniel and from the Psalms 
of Solomon. That the Jewish people would receive | 
as good news the announcement that their passionate | 
hopes were so near to realisation was only natural. His 
teaching is the gospel,—the good news,’—of the 
Kingdom, and there is no solid reason for ascribing this 
title to the evangelists rather than to Christ himself* 
The phrases to believe the gospel® and to ae. 
Kingdom of GOD are in meaning convertible. 

St. Matthew, it is to be observed, alone among 
the evangelists prefers the expression “kingdom of 
heaven” to “kingdom of God.” The former phrase 
has had meanings read into it both by Jewish and 
Christian students which are somewhat remote from 
the mental conditions of the time® The analogy of 
then current Jewish language makes it almost certain 

1 Mark i. 4; Matt. iv. 23. 

* Direct reference to existing anticipations is implied in the constant use 
of the formula as the short summary of our Lord’s message; see Luke iv. 
iv. 43, Vili. I, ix. 2, 11, 60; Matt. ix. 35, xili. 19; see also Matt. x. 7 
(Luke x. 9). 


3 Matt. xxiv. 14, etc. 

4 Dalman (p. 84) doubts whether our Lord spoke of his message as *‘ good 
news” ; he ascribes evayyeNifer@ar to the disciples. He points out (1) 
that where the latter word is connected with the Kingdom of Gop (Luke 
iv. 43, xvi. 16; Matt. xxiv. 14; Marki. 15) it is absent from the parallel 
passages ; (2) that the probable Aramaic original dassar does not necessarily 
imply ‘‘ good” news ; (3) that the direct result of the announcement was to be 
repentance. I do not regard these arguments as convincing ; (3) especially, 
is but half the truth. As we have seen, the kingdom expected in the Psalms 
of Solomon had at once rewards for the righteous, and terrors for the un- 
godly. 

> Mark 1. 15, x. 15. § Dalman, p. 76 and note. 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION ~ 63 


that “heaven” in the phrase “kingdom of heaven” 
represents the common euphemism for GOD which 
meets us also in the Parable of the Prodigal in St. 
Luke! The Mishna speaks? of the “fear of heaven,” 
“the name of heaven,” “by the hand of heaven,” 
“the mercy of heaven,” “the word of heaven,” 
“heaven does miracles,’—heaven in each case mean- 
ing “GOD” simply. If St. Matthew's Gospel stands 
closer than the other two to the original Aramaic of our 
Lord’s actual words, we may perhaps infer that he 
commonly used the phrase “kingdom of heaven,” and 
that in the other Gospels the equivalent, which Greek 
readers would more readily understand, is uniformly and 
correctly given. We shall do well, then, to adhere to 
the phrase “Kingdom of God”; and when using the 
alternative in quotations from St. Matthew, let us 
remember that the difference is one of expression and 
not of meaning. 

The Kingdom of GOD was a Jewish hope, and 
the Jews whom the hope had so long inspired, and 
who possessed it alone among men, were its obvious 
heirs. They are (in the expressive idiom preserved 
by St. Matthew alone) the “sons of the kingdom.” 
But the true “sons of the kingdom”* are marked 
out differently, not by blood but by disposition. 
Accordingly the Kingdom of GoD is to be taken away * 
from the Jews and given to others. What is to be 


1 This is probably so, but see Dalman, pp. 174, 178. 

? Dalman, p. 179. 

5 Matt. viii. 12, cf. ‘‘a son of peace,” Luke x. 6; also Matt. ix. 15. 

4 Matt. xviii. 38 (contrast Luke xvi. 8). The Talmud speaks of ‘‘sons 
of the world to come ” (passages in Dalman, p. 94). 

5 dpOjcera:, Matt. xxi. 43. 


64 REGNUM DEI 


taken away, is clearly the privilege of sharing the 
blessings of the Messianic reign. The Kingdom, as we 
shall see, is an inheritance, to be given by GOD, sought 
for by man; and what is given can be taken away. 


The true “sons” of the kingdom, then, are determined | 


by moral conditions, not by the mere accident of Jewish 
birth. This is already taught in Daniel and in the 


Psalms of Solomon, though it is contrary to general 
Jewish belief as exemplified in some quotations from 
the Rabbis, and in the appeal to descent from Abraham 
referred to in the Gospels.1 But this is not all. 
Firstly, the days of the chosen people are over. 
“ The law and the prophets were until John,” but from 
the days of John the Baptist “the kingdom of heaven 
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force,” ? 
while John himself is less than the least in the kingdom 
of heaven.2 Combining St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s 
version of the former saying, we see that “suffereth 
violence” in St. Matthew answers to “is preached” in 


St. Luke. The idea suggested then by Pidferas* 


must be that of the crowd rushing in over the prostrate 
fences which had hitherto shut them out, The Biacrat 
are those who, disqualified from entrance down to the 
time of the Baptist, now press in from all sides. This 
includes a secondary thought, namely that many are 
pressing in who will prove unfit for it. That such 


1 Luke iii. 8, etc. ; cf. Mark xii. 34 for the corrective principle. 

? Matt. xi. 12; Luke xvi. 16. 3 Matt. xi. 11 (Luke vii. 28). 

+ Dalman, pp. 113-116, prefers to refer the original meaning to ersecu- 
tions, as in the case of John himself. But this would mean that Luke 
wholly misunderstood the passage, which moreover becomes reduced to an 
anticlimax. Neither does Bidgerar refer to the effort necessary to enter, — 
a thought expressed elsewhere, zz/ra, pp. 66, 68, but foreign to the 
context here. 





SYNOPTIC TRADITION 65 


should press in is the penalty of all movements that 
become important or popular. 

In a word, the Kingdom of GoD is here already.” 
It was imminent when the Baptist announced its_ 
approach, and now the new reign of the Christ has 
begun. In this sense, our Lord’s mere coming as man 
has brought with it the true fulfilment of the hope of 
Israel: the house of Israel has received in him its 
promised King, who is to reign over them for ever and 
ever, and of his Kingdom there shall be no end But 
this is true only to the faithful Israelite, not to the 
average Jew. The latter is expecting the Kingdom of 
GoD immediately to appear, but his observation is 
misdirected” For the Kingdom is not to appear 
suddenly and palpably ; it is growing secretly, but is 
not here in its completeness. Rather it is barely 
beginning ; so secret are its workings that many even 
sincere and devout watchers for it do not see it as yet. 
Joseph of Arimathea, though St. Matthew speaks of 
him as “ Jesus’ disciple,’ is according to the two 
other Gospels still at the time of the Crucifixion on 
the outer fringe, simply waiting for the Kingdom of 
Gop’ To “receive” the kingdom, special preparation . 
is necessary, the child’s heart must be regained.+ 

For although in one sense the violent are taking the 
Kingdom by force, and whosoever will is pressing in, 
in another sense it is the exception to gain admission. 


abake i. 33, cf. x. 9, 113 Matt, x. 7. 

? Luke xvii. 20, xix. II sqq. 3 Mark xiv. 43 (Luke xxiii. 51). 

4 Mark x. 15 (Luke xviii. 17; Matt. xviii. 3, 4). ‘‘ Entrance into the 
future kingdom of God is dependent on a man’s right attitude to the 
_ present kingdom of God” (Charles, Zsch. p. 321. On ‘‘ entering” see 
also Dalman, p. 95 ; on ‘‘ receiving,” p. 91). 


5 


Vv 


~ 





66 REGNUM DEI 


The first are last and the last first. The recognised 
religious leaders not only fail to enter themselves,! but 
their influence keeps back those who would otherwise 
go in. Those who are most intractable to that 
influence are in many cases the nearest to the Kingdom. 
Our Lord watches as it were the entrance to the 
Kingdom and those who pass in, and he warns the 
religious world that those outside it are preceding 
them—rrpodyovtat. “The publicans and harlots are 
preceding you into the kingdom of heaven.” 

So far we have hardly come in sight of the twofold 
aspect of the Kingdom of God which we noted in St. 
Paul—the present and the purely eschatological? But 
the affirmation of a kingdom already come, membership 
of which depends simply upon _.character, and the 
range of which does not appear to the eye of flesh, 
gives the first? hint of the distinction between the 
two—between the First Advent and the Second. 

But meanwhile the two classes, those who enter and 
those who miss the way, are watched by Jesus as they 
range themselves on either side—together in the field, 
the bed, the mill, but wide asunder in view of the 
kingdom of heaven, and it is character that separates ; 
them, not anything else—sin that closes the door and 
forgiveness that unlocks* it again. The Scribes and 
Pharisees may shut the door against men; but what 
they bind upon earth is not for that reason bound in 
heaven. 

1 Matt. xxiii. 13, cf. vii. 21. 


2 But see above, p. 65, note 4; also below, p. 69 sq. 
3 This I think is at least as true as the suggestion of Charles, Zsch. 


p- 320. 
4 Matt. xvi. 19, contrast xxiii, 15 (see Lect. VIII. p. 371, note). 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 67 


Light is thrown upon the #imd of character which 
our Lord demands by the passages in which he speaks 
of entering into the Kingdom of Gop. After the 
departure of the rich young man, he had shocked his 
disciples by remarking “how hardly shall they that 
have riches enter into the kingdom of GoD.” He 
meets their astonishment (according to the best attested 
and very convincing text in St. Mark)? by the simple 
reminder, “ Children, how hard is it to enter the kingdom 
of Gop.” The thought clearly is that it is hard in 
any case to be born again—hard to escape or to get 
rid of that sophistication of character which is in the 
New Testament? the peculiar note of “the world,” hard 
to clear the ground of the heart from the thorns which 
are always growing up when we are most truly face to 
face with the realities of life, very hard to preserve or 
recover the child’s heart,—and that wealth, or its 
pursuit, makes what is hard in itself doubly difficult. 
But hard in itself, even without wealth, it remains; 
and the central and radical condition of the task is 
to become as little children :—“ of such is the kingdom 
of Gop” %—+that is the standard type of character ;— 
not childish in mind but childlike in heart, the type of 
Mary Magdalene, who with all her grievous sin “loved 
much,” of the twelve, who left “their own” to follow 
Jesus ;4—not negative freedom from sins that “needs 
no repentance,’ but that truth of instinct which 
distinguishes real morality from mere propriety, loyalty 
from “respectability,” love from worldly, or even other- 


1 Mark x. 24 (§ B) || Luke xviii. 24. 

2 Not in the Synoptics, but in SS. John and James, and partly in St. 
Paul. 

3 Matt. xviii. 3 (Mark x, 14). 4 Luke vii. 47, xviii, 28 7a toca, 





68 REGNUM DEI 


worldly, self-regard. It is the secret reserve which we 
make for our personal aims—the calculating instinct, 
cynical at its core, and incapable of whole-hearted 
devotion—that makes a man unfit, not ev@eroc, for the 
Kingdom of GOD. Our Lord demands of us the 
lovable character rather than the admirable. “The 
violent take it by force”—there are many who call 
Christ Lord, many who are now in his kingdom in its 
present imperfection, who will prove not to be of it. 
The warning is of terrible import to all who are “ called.” 
But as to the qualification, he has left us in no doubt. 

It is now time to ask more particularly as to the 
nature of the kingdom which is guarded by these 
conditions. To enter into the Kingdom of GOD is, 
in many passages of the synoptic record, placed in 
equivalence with entering into Life. To enter into the 
Kingdom of GOD we must become as little children, 
and to this end we must often surrender what has 
become as necessary to us as hand or eye*—for it is 
better to enter zwto Life, even maimed and halt. “ How 
hard is it to enter into the kingdom of GOD ”—strait 
is the way that leadeth unto Life® To enter into Life, 
again, is to be an heir of Eternal Life,” * to have treasure 
in the heavens,—in one word, to be “saved.”> Now 
the conception of Life doubtless covers, in the N.T. 
generally, the spiritual life of the present time; but in 
the synoptic Gospels at any rate the principal reference 
is to Life in the World to come,® brought to the true 

1 Luke ix. 62. 2 Matt. xviii. 3, 8 (Mark ix. 47). 

3 Matt. vii. 14, cf. Mark x. 24. 

4 Compare Matt. xix. 6, 7, 21 (Mark x. 17, 21; Luke xviii, 18, 22). 


5 See the disciples’ question, Matt. xix. 25. 
Always either fw) alévioc or 7 §w7. See Dalman, pp. 137-142. 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 69 


Sons of the Kingdom of GoD by its complete realisation. 
But to pray for the realisation of that_kingdom is not 
merely to ask a personal reward; to make the Kingdom 
of GOD and his Righteousness the goal of their lives 
was not, for Christ’s disciples, to live simply for their 
own interest, however spiritual, however remote, at 
however great present cost Rather it is the Father’s 
settled will that these things should be the Reward of 
those who do and suffer all things simply for the name * 
of Christ. |The Kingdom of Gop as the supreme goal 
of Christian endeavour is the absolute reign of GOD,— 
the selfless pursuit of the will of GOD as revealed for 
man’s well-being and salvation.) Its worth to the in- 
dividual is founded upon absolute trust in GOD as 
Father. If that trust is ours, we find in his Kingdom 
the only secure object of desire ——find what is worth all 
the world beside, the pearl® of great price for which 
alone we can give our very life and soul. “For 
whosoever will save his life shall lose it; for what 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own life; for what must a man give as ransom 
for his life.” 4 

And now to consider more closely the eschatology of 
the Kingdom of Gop in our Saviour’s teaching. “The 
violent take it by force”—-many are now in Christ’s 
kingdom who will not be in the kingdom of the Father. 
This is plainly laid down by him in the passage where 


1 Matt. vii. 33 (Luke xii. 31, 32); and see Lect. VIII. p. 381 sqq. 

2 ««For my name’s sake,” Matt. xix. 29, explaining ‘‘for the kingdom 
of God’s sake” the parallel in Luke xviii. 29. Mark x. 29 appears to 
combine the sense of the two other parallels, 

3 Matt. xiii. 44 sqq., cf. xix. 2. 

4 Mark viii. 35, 37 (Matt. xvi. 26; Luke xvii. 33, xiv. 26). 


70 , REGNUM DEI 


the two are most clearly distinguished! “The Son of 
Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather 
out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them 
which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace 
of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. 
Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father.” The kingdom of the Son 
of Man here most directly represents the Kingdom of 
Gob, as the kingdom towards which all Jewish hope 
has been directed, “the kingdom that cometh, the 
kingdom of our Father David.’2 Its moral char- 
acteristics are exhibited, though not perfectly nor 
without admixture, in the Society which Christ gathers 
round him, a new é«xAnoia continuous with, but super- 
seding, the éxxAnoia of GOD that has subsisted up till 
now, a congregation which he has built up upon the 
eternal rock, and which will never disappear from 
earth.? But its true character will never wholly appear, 
its glory, its identification with its heavenly counterpart 
the Kingdom of GOD is reserved for the Day when the 
Son of Man will come again “in his kingdom.”* The 
kingdom of Christ, now a reality but hidden, will then 
be manifest to friend and foe alike, and will reach its 
complete and final consummation. It was possibly of 
the triumphant return® of their Master as Messiah that 
the disciples were thinking when they asked® “who 
should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” certainly 


1 Matt. xiii, 41. 2 Mark xi. 10 ( B). 3 Matt. xvi. 18. 

4 Luke xxii. 30 (% B; D reads ‘‘in the day of thy coming,” an early and 
correct gloss), See Matt. xvi. 28. 

> Compare Matt. xx. 21, Baovdelg, with Mark x. 37, d6é¢. 

6 Matt. xviii. 1, cf. xix. 28; the final award, however, is ovx éudv 
Sovvat, Matt. xx. 23 (Mark x. 40). ; 





SYNOPTIC TRADITION 71 


it is the direct object of the faith of the dying male- 
factor, “ Jesus, remember me when thou comest zz thy 
kingdom.” + 

_ In our Lord’s teaching we distinguish three respects 
in which his coming will affect his kingdom. Firstly, 
it will complete it: he will sit enthroned as “the King” 
in the universal judgment of mankind. Secondly, it 
will purify his kingdom by judgment. He will send 
his angels to gather out of it all things and all persons 
that offend—the foolish virgins will find too late 
that they are unready for the Bridegroom’s coming. 
Thirdly, it will inaugurate the kingdom of the Father,’ 
the Kingdom of GOD in its complete and final realisa- 
tion, the Kingdom of GOD as it comes with Power,‘ the 
Kingdom of Gop in the absolute sense,> the Kingdom of 
GoD whose approach, bringing with it the complete 
redemption of the elect, is announced by the signs 
which usher in the consummation of the ages. This 
kingdom is free from all impurities; in it the saints” 
will find their lasting reward and reign with Christ. 


1 See above, p. 70, note 4. 

? Matt. xxv. 34; Charles, Zsch. p. 337 sqq. 

3 Matt. xxvi. 29, xiii. 43. 

4 This expression occurs Mark ix. 1, in a context to be compared care- 
fully with Luke ix. 27 ; Matt. x. 23, xxiv. 34, xxiv. 30, mera O6&. x. Suv. || 
Mark xiii. 26 ; Luke xxi. 27. To refer the “‘ kingdom of God coming with 
power ” to the first Pentecost, or to anything short of the Return of Christ, 
appears like flinching from the plain and inexorable reference of this group 
of passages. That the disciples believed the Lord fo have foretold his 
return within the lifetime of some then living is a conclusion hard to 
gainsay. But with reference to our Lord himself, all such passages must be 
read in connexion with Matt. xxiv. 36; Mark xiii. 32, where ovdé 6 vide is 
too unlikely an addition not to be original. See also Charles, Eschatology, 
PP- 330-332, 339. 

5 Luke xxii. 18. § Luke xxi. 31, cf. 27, 28, ix. 27. 

7 Matt. xiii. 43, contrasting 41. 


72 REGNUM DEI 





To them it will be an inheritance! prepared from the | 
foundation of the world,—but not only for those who 
have appeared to belong to it on earth—many from 
strange and remote countries will come in to share it 
while “sons of the kingdom” are cast out? 

The kingship of Christ, then, is manifest to all only , 
when he comes in his kingdom, when the Kingdom of 
GOD comes with power. In other words we have here 
the manifest origin of the thought that we met with in 
St. Paul. By completing his kingdom Christ in a 
sense supersedes it, by visibly beginning his reign he 
ends it. But yet it is not ended so much as merged, 
For in one well-marked group of passages he still 
speaks of the Father's kingdom as his own. “And 
I appoint unto you a kingdom as my Father hath 
appointed unto me, that ye may eat and drink at my 
table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel.”* This passage, if compared 
with the words used® by Christ of the eucharistic 
cup at the Last Supper—which as reproduced by St. 


1 Matt. xxv. 34, cf. Luke xii. 32. 

2 Matt. viii. 11 (Luke xiii. 28, 29). Compare St. Augustine, Z/. 102, 
and other passages referred to below, Lect. V. p. 199. 

3 Matt. xvi. 28; Luke xxiii. 42. : 

4 Luke xxii. 30. The passages which speak of eating and drinking in 
the future Kingdom of Gop (Matt. viii. 11; Luke xiii. 28, 29), and those 
referred to in the text, certainly are in direct relation to then current ideas ; 
see Luke xiv. 15. With them we may class the passage Matt. xix. 28, 
29 || Luke xx. 30 as above (but contrast Mark x. 30), and possibly Matt. v. 5. 
The passages, taken literally, are less in keeping with the drift of Christ's 
teaching than with Jewish and early Christian realistic eschatology (see 
below, Lect. IV.). But ‘‘it is impossible,” as Stanton says with justice, \ 
‘“to speak of a state so removed from our present earthly conditions except 
by the aid of symbolism.” See Charles, Eschatology, p. 339 fol. ; Schiirer, 

Gesch.* ii. 290-292 ; and Dalman, p. 90. ; 

5 Matt. xxvi. 29; Mark xiv, 25; Luke xxii 16, 18. 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 73 


Matthew expressly refer to the kingdom of the Father— 
certainly seems to bear the interpretation I suggest. 
But in view of our Lord’s reply to the mother of 
Zebedee’s sons it is just possible? that the reference 
here may be to the judgment and its attending circum- 
stances rather than to the eternity that follows it. 

We cannot then, either now or in eternity, deduce 
from our Lord’s words a real separation between his 
kingdom and the Kingdom of his Father. But a dis- 
tinction—as real and as evanescent as the distinction 
of eternity and time—is manifestly present to our 
Saviour’s mind. The kingdom of Christ is the kingdom 
of the Messiah, and is in its essential character media- 
torial. It zs the Kingdom of Gop, for the Kingdom 
of GOD is proved by Christ’s divine power to have 
arrived ;” but it is the Kingdom of GOD in conditions 
adapted to time and space, and to the actual state of 
mankind; and that in three respects. 

(1) In accordance with the whole tenor of prophecy, 
and with the expectation which prophecy had nursed 
and formed in the minds of the people, the Kingdom of 
Christ is the Kingdom of GoD delegated to Jesus as 
the Christ, the Messiah or anointed representative of 
GOD’s reign over his people.’ 

(2) The kingdom of Christ is the Kingdom of Gop 
in its making—in its imperfection—in its invisible 
growth, 

(3) The kingdom of Christ is thrown like a net to 
include as many as can be brought inside it, fit or 


1 See above, p. 70, note 6. 2 Matt. xii. 28; Luke xi. 20. 
8 «*He is the Mediator of Gop’s continuous and present judgment of the 
conduct of men.” Charles, Eschatology, p. 336. 


74 REGNUM DEI 


unfit wnt the coming of the Kingdom of GOD with 
power. Then at last the Baptist’s conception of the 
first coming of the Christ—in which he is the spokes- 
man of the same thought as we traced in the Psalms of 
Solomon—will be verified: “his fan is in his hand, 
and he will throughly purge his floor”—he will have 
reigned, as St. Paul formulates what Christ had in 
substance taught—“ until his enemies are made his foot- 
stool.” Ina sense then the kingdom of Christ, so far 
as it is visible on earth, is wider in its range than the 
Kingdom of Gop. Out of zt they will gather at his 
coming all ¢kzmgs that offend, and them—those fersonus 
—that work iniquity. For the present the kingdom of 
Christ comprises in it persons and things also—ideas 
and institutions—which will ultimately prove not to 
belong to it, though they may in many cases have 
served its purpose in their time. 

To gather up what has been said so far, our Lord 
is more explicit as to the spiritual meaning of his 
coming for ourselves than he is as to its material 
conditions” or surroundings. That Gop will reign in 
a sense in which he does not now appear to reign, 
that the disorders which now perplex us will be over- 
come and righteousness come by its own, is involved 
in the whole idea of GOD which permeates the Bible 
and in particular permeates the teaching of Christ. 


1 See above, p. 64, note 4. 

? Taking the record of our Lord’s words as it stands, we are left in some 
doubt as to (z) whether the Return is to be absolutely sudden, or preceded 
by definite and recognisable signs, and (4) whether in “this generation,” 
or at the end of a long and slow historical development. As to the latter 
point see above, p. 71, note 4; also consult the discussion in Charles, 
Eschatology, pp. 322-334. 


soe. + 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 75 


Our Lord’s eschatological teaching simply emphasises 
this great truth, adding to it the assurance that he will 
himself return to inaugurate GopD’s Kingdom. But in 
his descriptions of his personal reign as Messiah and 
of his return, all the earthly Judaic elements which 
even the Psalms of Solomon retain, are laid aside, 
although language is still used to which later on crude 
realism did not fail to appeal. 

The Kingdom of GoD, as our Lord preaches it, is at 
once present and future,? to be received now? to be 
entered into hereafter,! at once actual and ideal. In 
this respect it corresponds to the idea of Salvation, the 
summum bonum of the individual, as the whole to the part. 
It is to be found now, to be fully realised hereafter,—like 
the goodly pearl, or the treasure hid in the field,°>—\ to be 
acquired, when found, only at great cost: “ Children, how 
hard is it to enter into the kingdom of Gop.” ® 

Our Lord nowhere simply identifies his kingdom, or 
the Kingdom of GOD, with the Church which he came 
to found. As we have seen, his kingdom is visibly 
represented in his Church; but there are insuperable 
obstacles to treating the two things as convertible. 
Our Lord founded a society which was to be visible 
like a city seated on a hill that cannot be hid ;7 but 
the Kingdom of GOD is visible only to faith—the 
Kingdom of GoD is within you’—the Church is 

1 See above, p. 72, note 4. 2 Matt. v. 20, vii. 14, xxili. 3. 

3 Mark x. 15; Matt. v. 3, Io. 

4 But, in a real sense, also in the present, Matt. xxi. 31, xi. 11 (Luke 
vii. 28). 

5 Matt. xiii. 44. § Mark x. 24. 7 Matt. v. 14. 

8 Luke xvii. 21 évréo has been variously translated “among” or 


“within.” But the latter is the only rendering admissible on grounds of 
Biblical Greek ; this alternative is confirmed by Dalman, p. 119. 


76 REGNUM DEI 


present and actual, the Kingdom of GOD is present 
and yet future, actual and yet ideal. The Kingdom 
of GOD is the supreme end, the visible Church a 


means and instrument to that end. The Kingdom- 


of GOD is in its essential idea the Reign of Gop: 
those over whom he reigns, and who answer to that 
reign by loyal allegiance, constitute a kingdom in the 
sense of a body of subjects, and this is the ideal 
toward which the Church must ever be advancing ;— 
moreover in this kingdom there can be diversities of 
rank—some greater some less. But whereas the 
diversities of rank in the Church are diversities of 
administration—of function and office those in the 
Kingdom of God are degrees of spiritual character 
only—he that has become as the little child is greatest 
in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of GOD is 
as it were the idea, the transcendent reality, of which 
the Church is the visible, but necessarily imperfect 
copy; the more the Church rises towards perfection, 
the more truly her every act has its eternal counter- 
part in the sphere of transcendent reality—the more 
surely what she binds and looses on earth is bound 
and loosed in heaven. So far as the mediatorial reign 
of Christ can be distinguished in his teaching from 
the absolute and final reign of Gop, so far as the 
Church does really and truly embody in her members 
the reign of Christ in his redeemed, so far we can go 
beyond the letter of our Lord’s words, and in con- 
formity to their spirit speak of the Church as the 
kingdom of Christ. So far as the authoritative acts 
of the Church or her ministers are true to the known 
1 See below, Lect. V. p. 178. 








SYNOPTIC TRADITION 77 


will of her Master, we must recognise in them the 
mandate of Christ from his throne: He that heareth 
you heareth me, and he that despiseth you despiseth 
me. But the Reign of Christ is in itself invisible still, 
and its seat is in the heart and will. It is not 
exhaustively embodied in anything visible, even in his 
visible Society. What it really includes and excludes 
is kept to be revealed with the perfect Kingdom of the 
Father. That kingdom is with us in this life as an 
inspiration and an ideal, comprising all that is really 
akin to GopD’s Kingdom, all that embodies, in this 
world, any eternal principle. Understood thus—and 
no more limited range is worthy of it—the Kingdom of 
GOD is within us in so far as things eternal are with 
us now as things unseen. 


1 See below, Lect. V. p. 221, and Hinkmar’s comment on the words of 
Leo the Great (Serm. 2. ii.): ‘*‘‘manet ergo Petri privilegium ubicunque 
fertur ex ipsius aequitate iudicium.’ Qua sententia constat quia non manet 
Petri privilegium ubi ex eius aequitate non fertur iudicium.” 





PRE Uric Re BE 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT (II.) 


79 






Gloria Dei uiuens homo, uita autem hominis | 





Salvation according to Scripture is nothing less than 
~ restoration, or exaltation of life: while nothing that - 
a take of life is excluded from its scope; and as is the m 








LECTURE Iii 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE NEW 
TESTAMENT (IL) 


Things new and old.—St. Marr, xiii. 52. 


THE ideal character which belongs, in our Saviour’s 
teaching, to the Kingdom of GOD,—present yet not of 
this world, coming down from the past, yet bringing 
novel resources to meet new needs; the natural sequel 
of all that in the order of GoD’s working has gone 
before it, yet destined inevitably to burst the old wine- 
bottles, to break up existing forms of thought and life, 
and to cast men’s life in fresh and more plastic moulds, 
—involves the consequence that the most qualified and 
trained interpreters of the past have to go througha 
transformation before they can be fit—«v@ero.—for the 
Kingdom. They have much to unlearn, but they must 
not be “offended ”—shocked into looking back from 
the plough. Much to unlearn, but not all—they~will 
rather learn over again what they thought they had 
known before. Such a man, the “discipled scribe” 
ypappatero pabnrevbeic, will be like a householder, 
bringing out of his storehouse things new and old.1 
The ideal is a special application of the general and 
fundamental condition of re-birth—of receiving the 


1 Matt. xiii. 52, cf. Lev. xxvi. 10. 


6 


Yo 
rd 
rb 





82 REGNUM DEI 


Kingdom of GOD as a little child. The Scribe when 
made a disciple may be abhorred by his fellow-scribes 
as a renegade, he may be accused as St. Paul was 
accused of teaching “apostasy from Moses” +4—but 
such misjudgment will not disturb the serene loyalty 
of his discipled heart. The true convert differs from 
the renegade above all in this, that his change is not 
from love to hate, but from love to love: he has 
learned the higher without coming to despise the 
lower; the old, through which he has passed, is not 
disloyally cast aside, but is still his; the time has 
come, as it had come to Paul the servant of Jesus 
Christ, when he can “bring forth the old because of 
the new,’—he is the householder who dispenses from 
his store things new and old. 

It was said by Newman? that “ Christianity, though 
represented in prophecy as a kingdom, came into the 
world as an idea rather than as an institution.” If we 
must choose between the two alternatives suggested, 
the statement has an element of paradox. It might 
be maintained, on the contrary, that our religion first 
entered into the experience of mankind less as a 
speculative suggestion, like the philosophy of Plato or 
the word of some profound religious thinker or inspir- 
ing poet, than as an organisation actually at work, in 
the hands of a definite body of men, among whom 
alone could the specific lesson of Christ be learned, or 
his specific benefit to man be experienced. To treat 
Christianity simply as an idea, and to explain its 
history by laws supposed to govern the development 


1 grt dmrooraclay diddoKkets ard Mucéwo, Acts xxi. 21. 
2 Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 77 (ed. 1878). 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 83 


of thought, was the presupposition of the famous 
school of Tiibingen two generations ago. Their work 
has not been unfruitful; neglected facts have been 
once for all set in clear light, and historical theology 
is the richer for many illuminating suggestions. But 
the one-sidedness, and in many respects the pedantry, 
of the resulting view of early Christian history has long 
since convinced students on all sides of the inadequate 
perception of the nature of a religion upon which the 
whole process of investigation rested! If we are to 
choose between the two conceptions as alternatives, 
there would be weighty grounds for preferring the 
concrete view to the abstract, for reversing Newman’s 
dictum, and for saying that Christianity, represented, not 
in prophecy only but by its Founder, as a kingdom, came 
into the world as an institution rather than as an idea. 

But are the terms mutually exclusive? Institutions 
are the creation and vehicles of ideas, and have no 
vitality except as far as they embody ideas. If the 

1 Westcott justly remarks on the ‘‘ persistent forgetfulness” of many 
writers of this school, ‘‘ that Christian literature is from the first one product 
of the Christian life” ; neglecting ‘‘what I may venture to call the vital 
relations of literature . . . they treat books, for the most part, as if they 
belonged wholly to the region of speculation, and were not products and 
reflections of social activity” (Canon, ed. 4, p. xxxv sq.). The modern 
critical school have practically superseded this Zendenz-kritik by a more 
inductive method of Qzuel/en-kritik which has in many important respects 
reversed the verdicts of Baur and his followers. Without claiming more 
authority for Harnack’s famous utterance (Chronologie d. Alt.-Christl. 
Literatur, 1897, pp. 8, 10) than he would claim himself, it may fairly be 
regarded as a weighty sign of the times. But the sincerity and courage of 
the Tiibingen school must be cordially recognised. Not only were the 
facts emphasised by them, however exceptional, important and unduly 
neglected ; not only did they do justice to the ideal which underlies the 
concrete ; but truth, and therefore piety, can permanently only be the 


gainer by the results of free investigation, with ample consideration of the 
strength and weakness of every rational hypothesis. 





84 REGNUM DEI 


religious conception of the world is a valid one,—and 
no rival conception has yet succeeded in displacing it, 
—ideas are the ultimate realities, not only in human 
society but in the whole universe of matter animate 
and inanimate. Our limited minds can indeed with 
difficulty spell out the ideas which are embodied in the 
uniformities and correlations of Nature, but every fresh 
conquest of human knowledge confirms us in our belief 
that wherever in the universe we shall at any time 
succeed in penetrating, there we shall realise that Mind 
has been beforehand with us, and that blind unreason 
has nowhere a realm of its own. Revelation comes 
from GoD to man, not in abstract but in concrete 
form; but the institution, and the facts of our creed, 
embody ideas, embody a central idea. It is not given 
to us to co-ordinate these ideas in a perfect and flaw- 
less system, yet we are encouraged to exercise our 
mental faculties in the attempt to do so in some 
degree. The task of deciphering—the path of 
émiyvwots—is marked out for us by our own consti- 
tution and by the promise of Gop’s Spirit, and it is 
not faith, but “little faith,’ to flinch from the work. 
Not an idea merely, nor an institution merely, but an 
institution embodying an idea, and to be administered 
by constant recurrence to its informing idea, is a truer 
formula, if those are the terms to which we are bound, 
for the characterisation of the Christian Religion. 

But it may be questioned whether, when tried by 
the touchstone of the “Kingdom of GOD,” the alterna- 
tive we are considering touches the underlying reality 
at all. The Church is an institution more obviously 
than an idea; the Christian religion is an institution 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 85 


the vehicle of an idea, or an idea expressing itself in an 
institution ; the Kingdom of GOD may be called an idea 
-whose reality is a hope assured in the future, and a fact 
which faith affirms to be a reality now, rather than an 
institution in the sense of something tangible, organised, 
and patent to the eyes of all. The Church, as an in- 
stitution, embodies imperfectly the Kingdom of GOD as 
an idea. But as we weigh the two alternatives in the 
balance and seek a place for the Kingdom of GOD in 
either scale, we find the scales too small. Our cate- 
gories fail us, we have missed the category which really 
and alone applies—the category of Life. That the 
kingdom of Gop is Life, we have already seen! and 
shall see. That life embodies an idea is axiomatic for 
the Christian—for any Theistic—view of the universe, 
it is the postulate of organic teleology, and for that very 
reason—that it is no blind product of mindless forces, 
but embodies the divine idea,—life is organised, system- 
atised, proceeds upon definite laws of wonderful con- 
stancy coupled with as wonderful plasticity of adaptation. 
An institution, as we commonly use the term, borrows 
some of these characteristics from life, of which it is the 
feeble copy. And if the Kingdom of GoD was rightly 
placed by the founder of the Christian religion as the 
head and summary of that Religion which he brought 
into the world, we shall speak more worthily if we rise 
above the alternative of idea and institution, and say that 
the Christian religion came into the world as a LIFE.? 

1 See Lecture II. p. 68. 

2 That is not merely a course of life (Blwowc, Acts xxvi. 4, or Bloc, Luke 
viii. 14; 1 John ii. 16, iii. 17), but an animating principle, distinctive of 


life as against death (fw as in almost every book of the N.T., especi- 
ally in St. John and the Ep. to the Romans). 





86 REGNUM DEI 


The Kingdom of GOD is within you; so far as the 
Kingdom of GOD is a fact of present experience, it con- 
sists, so we gather from the tenor of the gospel record, 
in the reign of Christ within the heart and conscience 
of those who receive him—-and where he reigns, there 
is Life. To enter into the kingdom, as our Lord saw 
the publicans and harlots enter it, zow, is to enter into 
life now, and to enter the kingdom az ¢he last day is to 
enter into life eternal. 

By the words “ kingdom of GOD,” then, our Lord de- 
notes not so much his disciples, whether individually or 
even as forming a collective body, as something which 
they receive, a state upon which they enter! For its 
ultimate fulfilment the term indicates an order of things 
final and absolute, in which GOD is all in all.2—But the 
Kingdom of GOD is also spoken of in another? sense, 
descriptive of the order of events, the sum total of the 
methods and processes which, under the guidance and 
rule of GOD, go to bring about that final state of Per- 
fection. Our Lord came not to destroy but to accom- 
plish, and a man’s rank in the Kingdom of GopD#* will 
correspond to his truth to that vital principle. The 
Kingdom of GOD is advancing by means to which we 
are often blind ; we may hinder it by ignorance or per- 
verseness, by lack of sympathy with its subtle and secret 
principles, by ill-judged anxiety for its advancement in 
what may seem to us obvious and necessary ways, by 

1 See Luke xii. 32; Matt. xxi. 43, xxv. 34. 

? We may, for the sake of contrast, distinguish this as the ‘‘statical” sense 
of the words ; but we must not think of the Kingdom of Gop, even in this 
sense, as a motionless state of equilibrium, an idea for which Nature supplies 


no analogy. 
3 Or ‘‘ dynamical.” 4 Matt. v. 18 sq. 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 87 


impatience at what look to us like obstacles to its pro- 
gress, though they may be in truth essential factors 
in the counsels of GOD for our good and the cause of 
his kingdom. For— 


Gop fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world, 


The Kingdom of Gop in this sense is to be distinguished 
from God’s general rule over all creation, which it pre- 
supposes; and also from his general moral government, 
of which it may be viewed as a central but special part. 
In the kingdom of GoD he is not merely controlling the 
issues of human conduct, which is supposed in the bare 
idea of moral government, but is bringing his rational 
creatures into conscious dependence on himself on the 
ground of the redemptive work of his Son. This Gop 
does, so we must believe, in many ways, some obvious 
and marked out, some hidden and apt to elude our ap- 
preciation. But Christ wills that his disciples should, 
for others’ good and for their own, be on the alert for the 
inward principles which exhibit themselves in the 
boundless variety of particular cases. Such principles 
are secrets—pvoTypia '—of the Kingdom of Gop, and 
it is to give hints of some of them that many of the 
Parables are spoken—especially those introduced by 
express reference to the Kingdom of GOD. Sometimes 
the bearing of the parable is obvious. The dealings of 
GOD with Jew and Gentile in history is brought under a 
broad and deep principle in the Parable of the Labourers 
in the Vineyard,” and again in part in the Parable of the 
Marriage Feast in St. Matthew. The Parable of the 


1 Matt. xii. rr. 2 xx. I sqq. 3 xxii. I sqq. 





88 REGNUM DEI 


Mustard Seed, of the Leaven, and of the gradual growth 
of the corn, illustrate equally the growth of the Chris- 
tian Society and the growth in grace of the individual 
soul. Those of the Net and of the Tares,? and in part 
again St. Matthew’s parable of the Marriage Feast, 
throw light upon the Reign of Christ in the Christian 
Church, that of the Unmerciful Debtor * brings out the 
relation of the Kingdom of GOD to the forgiveness of 
sins. That of the Wise and Foolish Virgins relates 
specially to the return of Christ “in his kingdom.” * 
It is not very easy in all cases to trace a generic — 
difference between Parables which are introduced by the 
formula “the kingdom of GoD is likened ”—or its equi- 
valent—and those which are given without the formula. 
But it appears. to be designedly omitted in many in- - 
stances where types of character which have no place 
in the Kingdom are described. For example, in St. 
Luke’s parables of the Unjust Judge, the Rich Fool, the 
Unjust Steward, and the Barren Fig-tree, and the Par- 
able of the Wicked Husbandmen, which all three Gospels 
give without the characteristic formula. Again, some 
parables of contrast lack it; for example, St. Luke’s 
parables of the Rich Man and Lazarus, of the Pharisee 
and the Publican, of the Two Debtors, and St. Matthew’s 
of the two sons sent by their father to work in his vine- 
yard. But it is difficult to assign a reason for its 
absence from St. Luke’s parables of the Prodigal Son, 


1 Mark iv. 30; Matt. xiii. 33; Markiv. 26. ‘‘ The kingdom must spread 
extensively and intensively : extensively till its final expansion is out of all 
relation to its original smallness . . . intensively till it transforms and 
regenerates the life of the action and of the world” (Charles, Zschatology, 
Pp. 333). 

2 Matt. xiii. 47, 36. 3 xviii. 23 sqq. 4 xxv. I sqq. 


—— 


SYNOPTIC TRADITION 89 


the Lost Coin, of the good Samaritan, the Great Supper, 
and the Pounds, St. Matthew’s parable of the Talents, and 
from that of the Lost Sheep, common to SS. Matthew 
and Luke. It should be noted that the Parable of the 
Sower, though not introduced by the formula, is ex- 
pressly referred to the Kingdom of Gop in our Lord’s 
comment as given by all three evangelists! Further, 
we must observe that as a rule where more than one 
evangelist record the same parable, the formula is 
present in all or absent in all, even in variants like the 
Parables of the Pounds and of the Talents; the only 
exception I can recall is that of the Marriage Feast in 
St. Matthew, which has the formula, while the very 
similar Supper-Parable in St. Luke omits it. We can- 
not fail to notice, again, that the omission of the formula 
is specially frequent in St. Luke. 

I cannot more fitly conclude a survey of the teaching 
of our Lord on this subject as recorded by the synoptic 
Gospels, than by a brief consideration of the Beatitudes. 
The relation of the individual to the Kingdom of GoD 
depends, nothing in our Lord’s teaching is more clear 
than that, upon his character. This is the principle 
which the Beatitudes enforce, and in them one funda- 
mental type of character is throughout in view. The 
poor, not merely that is to say those actually badly 
off, but those who as St. Matthew adds are poor 7@ 
mvevpati,” the afflicted, the sufferers for righteousness’ 
sake, the meek, those who are conscious of personal sin 
but long to be better—who hunger and thirst as 
St. Matthew again convincingly adds “after righteous- 
ness,’—those who face unpopularity in all its forms and 


1 Matt. xiii. 11 ; Mark iv. 11; Luke viii. 10. 2 Luke vi. 20; Matt. v. 3. 





90 REGNUM DEI 


with all its consequences for the Son of Man’s sake— 
the merciful, the peace-makers, the pure in heart. All 
these are so many manifestations of the childlike 
temper! which turns to Christ with no secret reserve, 
no hankering back,? the loyal children of GoD—the 
type of the Hasidean loyalists of the Maccabean time 
raised to a higher spiritual plane—one to which all men, 
Jew or Gentile without distinction, are summoned to rise. 
And as the type of character—many and beautiful as 
are its forms—is at bottom one, so also the promised 
reward is one. Theirs is the Kingdom of GoD—theirs 
now, as a present possession. They shall inherit the 
land—though obscure and oppressed they really rule 
its destinies and are the promise of its future—they 
shall obtain mercy, be fed, be comforted, shall laugh, 
shall enjoy the great reward in the heavens; they 
shall earn the name of Sons of GOD—shall see GOD. 
The kingdom of GOD is to see GOD—both now and 
hereafter. Now, as sons by faith, then as sons in 
possession of their inheritance. 

We have been thus brought by the synoptic record 
within the range of thought characteristic of the 
Fourth Gospel, to which we must now turn. 


II 


The Kingdom of GOD is not often referred to by 
name in the Gospel of St. John. For example in our 
Lord’s words to Pilate, “my kzmgdom is not of this 
world,”? the reference is at most indirect. What is 


1 Matt. xix. 14 (Mark x. 14; Luke xviii. 16). 
? Luke ix. 62. 8 John xviii. 38. 


FOURTH GOSPEL gI 


there in question is our Lord’s Bacuela in the sense of 
his personal royal rank, “ Art thou a king, then ?” — 

“ My kingship is not from this world”. I amaking— © 
that is, but in a sense which rises above the world’s 
idea of kingship, in the sense that “all who are of the 
truth hear my voice.” We can bring this use of the 
word into relation with the thought of Christ’s rezgn as 
King, but not quite to the extent of identification. 
Here the kingship of Christ is asserted as his personal 
claim, generally when his kingdom is spoken of his 
royal rank is presupposed rather than asserted de novo. 
With “kingdom” in the sense of realm the passage 
has no direct concern. But in the Fourth Gospel as 
in the Synoptics, the Kingdom of GOD meets us at 
the outset of Christ’s teaching. In the colloquy with2 
Nicodemus to “see” or “enter into” the Kingdom of % 
GOD is assumed as the chief good upon which man’s + 
ultimate well-being depends. But generally in St. - 
John the chief good of man is conceived as Life, or 5 
Eternal Life, as in the passage * which, as we have just ? 
seen, sums up the thought of the Kingdom of GOD as 
expressed in the several Beatitudes :—“ And this is Life 
Eternal, that they know thee, the only true GOD, and 
Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” 

And since the expressly announced‘ purpose of the 
Fourth Gospel is to bring out the value of Christ’s 
work for the individual soul, it follows that where the 
synoptic Gospels speak of the Kingdom of Gop, St. 


1 See for example Mozley’s University Sermon on this text. 

2John iii. 3, 5. In the latter verse the variant tay olpdywy is a 
corruption, though apparently an early one. For ‘‘ seeing” the Kingdom 
of God compare Luke ii. 30 with John iii. 36. 

3 John xvii. 3. 4 xx. 31, Tadra 6¢ yéypamrat iva, x.7.d. 


92 REGNUM DEI 





John speaks of Life. In his telling, “the Gospel of 
the Kingdom becomes the Gospel of Life”! It is 
important here to remind ourselves that this is not a 
substitute but a true equivalent, not simply due to 
the idiosyncrasy of the Fourth Evangelist. The 
synoptic record has already shown us? that Life, 
Eternal Life, was an equivalent term for the Kingdom 
of GoD in their tradition of Christ’s teaching. Here 
however, as in some other respects, a vein of his 
teaching traceable though not emphasised in the 
triple record is placed by St. John in the forefront and 
centre. We have, it would seem, in his Gospel a 
tradition of one and the same Personality, character,’ and 
teaching as that portrayed by the Synoptics, but passed 
through a psychological medium different in kind, and 
coloured by experience and reflexion of a generation 
longer’s duration. How then does the Johannine tra- 
dition of Christ’s teaching present this “ Life” to us? 
On the one hand it is, in its full and final sense, 
eternal and reserved for the future “For this is the 
will of my Father, that every one which seeth the Son 
and believeth him may have everlasting life; and I will 


1 This side of Christ’s teaching, like the gospel of the kingdom, left its 
mark on the early preaching of the Apostles. Compare John vi. 69 with 
Acts v. 20. See also Charles, Eschatology, p. 368. 

2See above; p. 68. The same equivalence in many passages of St. 
Augustine, see Reuter, Augustinische Studien, pp. 19, 124, note. 

3 Without at all minimising the differences of presentment in the Fourth 
Gospel as compared with the synoptic tradition, it must be insisted that 
to the non-theological reader the human character of Christ in the two 
records is wholly homogeneous; see for example the traits taken 
without any prepossession from both sources, in Hazlitt’s fine passage on 
the character of Christ in his introductory essay on Elizabethan Literature 
(Ireland’s Selections from Hazlitt, p. 175 sq., ed. 1889: Warne & Co.). 

4 John vi. 40, and often elsewhere. 


FOURTH GOSPEL 93 


raise him up at the last day.” It is unnecessary to 
multiply quotations to illustrate the thought, here so 
clearly expressed, which saturates the Gospel according 
to St. John. But on the other hand the life which 
Christ gives is a present possession, “he that believeth 
on the Son #azh everlasting life,” 1 a possession of which 
death cannot rob us; “he that believeth in me, though 
he be dead yet shall he live”; “if any man eat of his 
bread he shall live for ever,’—“ except ye eat, ye have 
no life in you,” *—the Life is not only prospective but 
im us now, “If a man keep my saying, he shall never 
see death,” “ whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die,” ze. the mere fact of physical death cannot 
destroy the Divine Life possessed in this life. “ Who- 
soever seeth the Son and believeth in him,—eateth my 
flesh and drinketh my blood,—hath eternal life, and 
I will raise him up at the last day”;% the future life, 
that is, is the unfolding of a seed already quick with 
energy in this life, the salvation realised then is 
organically linked with the state of salvation to be 
experienced now: “verily, verily, I say unto you, he 
that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent 
me, hath everlasting life and cometh not into condem- 
nation, but “ath passed out of death into life.”* Again, 
to “see God” is an equivalent, not only as we have 
seen from the Beatitudes in the synoptic tradition, for 
possessing the Kingdom of GOD, but also as we have 
seen and shall see, in St. John’s Gospel for Lzfe. Vata 
hominis visio Det is a voice from the direct spiritual 


1 John iii. 36, vi. 47, and perhaps 54, xx. 31. 

Brats 25) viewhO; 53; 3 Vili. 51, 52, xi. 26, vi. 40, 54. 

4. 24, cf. 1 Johniii. 14. ‘‘ Eternal life in the Fourth Gospel is not a 
time-conception, but a purely ethical and timeless one” (Charles, p. 370). 




























me REGNUM DEI 


lineage? of St. John. This vision of Gon is reserved for 
the future, “when he shall appear, we shall be i 

him; for we shall see him as he is”*—+this alo 
absolutely satisfies the verse* which I quoted at the 


= nA 


outset of this part of our enquiry; but it is a present — 
possession to faith, It is remarkable that the word — 
* faith "—-wievis,—with the simpler meaning which it — 
bears in the first three Gospels, disappears entirely in — 
St. John. But in his writings, more than in the whole — 
of the New Testament outside them, the profoundly — 
suggestive muotTevew cio—* believing in” (lit af) BA 
prominent and frequent* “He that hath seen” Jesus 
“hath seen the Father”;* and to believe in himisto © 
live® a 
The conception of Life, then, in St. John, corresponds 
to that of the Kingdom of Gop, both in St Paul and ~ 
in the synoptic record of Christ teaching, in this — 
respect, that its full and fundamental reference is to the 
consummation of all things at the last day, but that it 
is “ timeless,” and therefore has also a preparatory and 
partial, but real place in present experience,a fact of 
real experience in so for as the cleceal 
which underlies the temporal. St Paul’? St John, 
and the first three evangelists are here at one. aa 
2 Trenaens, Baer. Iv. xx. 7, Ch xxxvill. 5, Spnrw 22 Good weporecqran® 
aobapriac. e 
2y John mi 2 (ch Matt v. 8). I quote the First Epistle of St. Johm ass 
of one piece with the Gospel, winch it appears written to a 
1 Jonni. 1, 2 

* Jobn xvi. 5. 

“The phrase rar 6 swreie is pecoliar to St. John and St. Paul 

3 John xiv. 0; ch Ion. ad Palyc. 5, rev Ghpotor tiv BC Hae Spore, and 
Tren. Boer. 1v. iv. 2, “ Mensers enim Patris Files qaoniem & agit eu” 

* John = 26. 

* Rom. iv. 17, aendabove, p. 5459.; the correlation of “ Kinedom™ and 


FOURTH GOSPEL 95 


In the synoptic Gospels Jesus is King, and his 
advent brings with it a kingdom in which he reigns as 
vicegerent of his Father; and as he has received his 
kingdom from his Father, so he appoints it to his 
disciples that they may reign with him. In St. John 
he is charged with divine Life, which his Father has 
given him to possess in himself, and which he has 
power to give to others. “And this is the record, 
that GoD hath given to us eternal life, and this life is 
in his Son,” 1—*“that whosoever believeth should in 
him have eternal life.”? He is the Resurrection and 
the Life, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, “ For 
as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he 
given to the Son to have life in himself.” “As the 
living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, 
so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.”? 
The mediatorial Reign thus appears as a mediatorial 
ministry of divine Life, of personal knowledge of God: 
“If ye had known me, ye should have known my 
Father” ;* “If ye had known me, ye should have known 
my Father also.” ® He who has seen him has seen the 
Father, And here we are brought face to face with 
all the moral qualifications for that Life which consists 
in the knowledge of GOD, and which answer to the 
more simply formulated qualifications ® we have gathered 
from the other Gospels for entering into the Kingdom of 
Gop—for entering into Life, “He that saith I know 
him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and 


** Life,” Rom. v. 17. The ‘‘ Johannine” idea of life already in Rom. vi. 
4, cf. viii. 12. 

1 John v. 11. 2 John iii. 15, & B. 

3 John xi. 25, xiv. 6, v. 26, vi. 57. 4 John viii. 19. 

5 John xiv. 7, cf. 17. 5 Supra, p. 67 sq. 


96 REGNUM DEI 


the truth is not in him”; “whoso sinneth hath not 
seen him neither known him”; “he that loveth not 
knoweth not GoD, for GOD is love”; “we know that 
we have passed from death unto life, because we love 
the brethren.” + 

Our survey, brief and inadequate as it has necessarily 
been, of our Lord’s teaching concerning the Kingdom of 
Gop, has sufficed, I think, to explain fully the great 
transition from the hope of the Jewish people, as 
formulated in the Psalms of Solomon, to the hope of 
redeemed mankind which centres round the Kingdom 
of GOD in the writings of St. Paul. The former was 
intense and, in its highest expression, noble and sub- 
lime. But its appeal was so bound up with national 
experiences and national feeling as to be incapable 
of awaking a spontaneous response in the deep and 
universal aspirations of the human soul thirsting for 
salvation. Statesmen and political writers languidly 
noted that oracles were afloat in Judea to the effect 
that some would arise in the East and gain supremacy 
over the world; or again reaction from the emptiness 
of Greek and Roman religion filled the synagogues 
of the Jewish Dispersion with Gentile adherents; but 
there was no gospel for sinful humanity. Whereas, in 
St. Paul, the hope of Israel has become the hope of 
mankind, and all without distinction of birth, blood, or 
culture are called to the Kingdom and Glory of GOD as 
fellow-citizens of the saints. 

This change we have now traced in its origin, in the 
preaching of the Kingdom of GOD by Jesus Christ. 
Beginning with the announcement, essentially a “good 


1 1 John ii, 4, iii. 6, iv. 8, iii, 14. 





FOURTH GOSPEL 97 


spell”—a evayyéduov, that the hope of GOD’s people 
was now to be fulfilled, he uses the conviction, already 
impressed upon them from of old, that the unworthy 
would be excluded from the fulfilment, and that the 
children of the Gentiles were to be blessed in the reign * 
of the Messiah; and proclaims, to minds already in 
part prepared to receive it, that character alone will be 
the qualification for entrance into the promised kingdom, 
This entrance, again, is entrance inte Life, life to be 
enjoyed as an eternal activity of the soul in the com- 
pleted Kingdom of GoD, but to be experienced now as 
a renovation of the inner self, as the reign of Christ in 
our hearts and wills and character. We see, accord- 
ingly, that the Kingdom of GoD is, in our Lord’s 
teaching as in St. Paul’s, primarily associated with the 
consummation of Gop’s ultimate purpose for his 
rational creation, a goal but dimly apprehended by the 
Jews in their belief in a world to come, but clear and 
dominant in the view of the world inculcated by our 
Lord. This is especially true of the perfect kingdom 
of the Father, and wholly true of the kingdom in which 
Christ is to return at the last day. But whereas 
the Jewish hope of the kingdom had looked for its 
inauguration by the advent of the King Messiah, our 
Lord distinctly taught that his advent as Messiah was 
twofold; and there resulted a twofold conception of 
the Kingdom of GoD of which he is the Mediatorial 
Head. In the future he is to come, in the last day, “in 
his kingdom”; but with his entrance into the world his 
Kingdom has also come. From thenceforward he is 
King, and reigns. His Kingdom in this sense is within, 
and consists in his reign in the hearts of his true 
| 





98 REGNUM DEI 


disciples. What is true of life in the Fourth Gospel 
applies with equal truth to the Kingdom of GoD in the 
Synoptics; it is present and future, and its present 

existence is in preparation for the future which precedes | 
it not in time but in the purpose of Gop. The Society 
of Christ’s disciples—his Church—is therefore not to 
be identified with Gop’s Kingdom in the sense of a 
realm or body politic; rather it is a body of men,—a 
little flock—to whom that Kingdom is promised as 
their divinely destined possession.1 The Church stands 
in a more direct relation to the Mediatorial Kingdom 
of Christ; but here, too, the two things are not con- 
vertible; the Church is an instrument, the chief in- 
strument, of the Reign of Christ, it is its principal 
sphere, and aims at worthily embodying it in the sight 

of men. The Kingdom of Gop is not simply an idea, 
nor simply an institution, but a Life, and of that Life 
—the Christian Life—the Church is the nurse and 
home. Finally we have seen that while the Kingdom 
of GoD is most properly the final and perfect state in 
which Gop’s will is fully accomplished, the name is 
also applicable to the complex and manifold process 
which is leading to that state, and how this application 
is made in a large number of our Saviour’s Parables. 
And coming back to our starting-point, the funda- 
mental condition of character, we saw the character 
which makes a man fit for the kingdom summed up, 
both in its unity and in its diversity, in the Beatitudes, 
in which moreover the synoptic conception of the 
kingdom begins to converge with that of Life, its 
equivalent in the writings of St. John. Here the 

1 Luke xii. 33. 





THE LORD, THE CHURCH, THE SPIRIT 99 


universalisation of the originally Jewish and nationalist 
hope of a Kingdom of Gop reaches its culminating 
point. Our Lord, starting from the position that 
“salvation is of the Jews,’ has widened it out till 
it embraces human nature as a whole. The national 
longing for the “sure mercies of David” has become 
in his hands the desire of all flesh for the salvation 
of Gop, and the assurance that that desire has not 
been implanted in our hearts in vain. 

Our Lord then, from his first Advent, has begun a 
Reign on earth, the seat and sphere of which is in 
the inward spiritual life of man, a reign within us, and 
therefore, though visible by its effects, having a range 
whose limits are not visible to the eye nor definable 
like those of a temporal kingdom by ascertained 
frontiers. He has also instituted a Society, with a 
definite rite of admission, and entrusted its extension 
and its government to disciples selected and trained in 
the first instance by himself. During his personal and 
visible presence this Society needed no other provision 
for its guidance than his Eye and Hand and Word. 
When his visible presence was to be removed, as it 
was expedient that it should, he promised that his 
followers should not lack guidance as real as that 
which his personal presence had supplied. He would 
be with them still, not visibly, but by the Spirit which 
would “take of his and show it to them.” Clearly 
then, if we have rightly interpreted our Saviour’s words 
in regard to the relation between the inward and 
spiritual Kingdom of Christ and the visible Church of 
Christ as its nurse and home, then the personal reign of 
Christ in which his Kingdom consists,—represented in 





100 REGNUM DEI 


the first instance by the direct dependence upon his 
look and his word of his disciples during his life upon 
earth, will from his Resurrection and Exaltation to the 
Right Hand of the Father be realised in the guidance 
of his followers, collectively and individually, by the 
Holy Spirit? In the Church of New Testament 
times this is abundantly verified in both respects. 
And, when we bear in mind that the only “ positive” 
laws bequeathed by our Saviour to his visible Society— 
over and above the general commission to the Apostles 
—had relation to the visible Society as such, namely, 
the rite of admission to the fellowship of his Body and 
the rite by which that fellowship was to be asserted, 
maintained, and strengthened, it does not surprise us 
that it is in the collective action of the Society *—as 
a whole or in its parts—that the guidance of the 
Spirit is most especially counted upon. But clearly 
there remain many possible alternatives in the applica- 
tion of these general principles. When the first 
intensity of spiritual fellowship and spiritual life has 
become weakened, partly by time and custom, still 
more by the increasing diffusion of the Body—when 
our Lord’s saying that the violent take the Kingdom 
of GoD by force becomes verified on a scale incom- 
parably beyond anything possible in its first begin- 
nings; when experience has begun to remind men 
how much more possible it is to mistake the utterances 
of the Spirit than the audible words of a visible 

1 The Spirit accordingly was, to the primitive Church, the “ Vicar of 
Christ,” see Tert. de Praescr. xiii., who says that Christ ‘‘ misisse wzcarzam : 
uim Spiritus Sancti, gz credentes agat,” cf. John xvi. 13, ete. 


2 For instance Acts xili. 2, xv. 28, xvi. 6, 7 (cf. v. 3, 4), XX. 23, 28; 
I Tim, i. 18, ; 





THE LORD, THE CHURCH, THE SPIRIT Io1 


Master; when last but not least the Christian Society 
becomes, if not coextensive, at any rate commen- 
surate with the organisation of government and the 
sphere of the civil ruler: then the Christian Church is 
confronted with problems of which no appeal to the 
recorded word of Christ furnishes a solution ready 
to hand. To begin with, how is the true voice of 
the Spirit to be distinguished amid conflicting utter- 
ances which claim to be his? what and where is the » 
authority finally to adjudge between alternative inter- 
pretations of the Words of the Lord? is the Reign of 
Christ exercised, in default of a clear direction of the 
Spirit acknowledged by all, by some visible representa- 
tive, collective or singular? And again if the Church 
is in some sense to be identified with the Kingdom of 
Christ, how far does that identification carry us? Is 
the Church a body politic as completely equipped for 
all purposes of government as a temporal state maono 
éxovca mépag tio avtapxeiac?! And if so, what is 
her relation to the civil government which has been 
accustomed to regulate many matters which are 
essential to the self-completeness of the Church as 
a Perfect Society? In a word, what precise conse-~ 
quences lie in that mission of the Christian Church to 
all the world with which Christ left her entrusted ? 
These questions were some of them long in coming 
to an issue,’ very long in receiving a practical answer, 
and their answer in explicit thought ‘ has been slower 
still. But if the religion of Christ was assured from 


? Arist. Polit. 1. ii. 8; see below, Lect. VII. p. 344, note 2. 
? Lect. V. p. 219. 3 Lect. VI. p. 227 sq., 252 sq. 
* Lect. VII. pp. 337 sqq. 





102 REGNUM DEI 


the first of a world-wide and age-long history, they 
were every one of them inevitable. Were the solutions 
of these inevitable questions given by our Saviour in 
advance? To claim this is either to make extra- 


vagant demands upon the theory of secret tradition, or 


to torture into our service passages from the Gospels 
which, before the questions which they are supposed to 
decide became urgent, received interpretations different 
in kind—the true reply is, surely, that they were 
designedly left by our Lord, in his supreme Wisdom, to 
the test of Christian experience. Had a ready solution 
of them been a necessity for his followers, a necessity 


for his Reign on earth, it would have been furnished, 
and would have been known from the first. | Whether 


this was so, we shall endeavour to see. But the Holy 
Spirit was promised to guide the Church into all truth, 
—not zz but zzto,—not along a single groove well- 
marked out from the first, but through the difficult 
ways of experience, devious and disappointing at times, 
with many a triumphant forward rush in directions 
which have proved to be mistaken, but never without 
resulting light and gain, never without the Spirit, inter- 
preting the one fundamental experience of Redemption 
“in many parts and in many manners”—always and 
everywhere the same Kingdom of Christ, the Christian 
life in its infinite variety; but in its essence, first and 
last, true to type. The question which lies behind 


appears to be this. Granting that the ae 


reign of Christ, which is the Kingdom of GOD in its 
progressive realisation between the first Advent and the 
second, is in itself invisible, it must still produce visible 
effects, and tend toward a condition of things on earth 


oo LORD, THE CHURCH, THE SPIRIT 103 


which corresponds to it. Well then, what condition of ~ 


things, what state of human society and what relation 
of the Church to the civil organisation of human 
society, satisfies the true conception of the Reign of 
Christ? how is the Kingdom of GoD to receive its 
truest realisation possible in this world? This is the 
question, the answer to which is to be read from the 
experience of Christian history. It can at best be 
answered imperfectly, because we know only a part, 
perhaps as yet only the beginnings, of that history. 
But it is of vital moment to read, as truly as it is 
given us to do, that part which has so far unfolded 
-itself to our view. 

It has been necessary to say thus much by way of 
epilogue to the consideration of the gospel record, for 
it is from the recorded words of Christ, alone, that we 
gain an insight into the idea of the Kingdom of GoD in 


| 


its essence, in its subtle connexion with its historical 5 


presuppositions, and its multiple complexity of applica- — 


tion. Even St. Paul’s letters, invaluable for their side- 
light upon the gospel record, add, as we now see, but 
little to the substance of our Saviour’s words—what 
St. Paul taught on the subject was what he had received 
from the Lord. 


Ill 


With one exception, the remaining New Testament 
books add little to the results now before us. St. James 
and St. Peter make reference to the Kingdom of GoD, 
but their few allusions serve principally to show that it 
was the eschatological idea—primary as we have seen 


104 REGNUM DEI 





in our Lord’s own teaching—that was mainly associated 
with it in the mind of the Apostolic age. St. James, in 
language which seems in part to echo a verse of St. 
Paul’s, speaks of the “poor in respect of the world” 
chosen by GOD as “heirs of the kingdom which he 
hath promised to them that love him.”! St. Peter’s 
language about the incorruptible inheritance? reserved 
for the saints is of the same kind, and the same may 
_be said of the reference in the Second Epistle? In 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which we have in so 
many ways an earlier parallel to the thought of the 
Fourth Gospel, but with marked Pauline influence, two 
points, both secondary to St. Paul, require our notice. 
Firstly, here as in St. Paul, the 110th Psalm supplies 
the terms ‘ in which the exaltation of Christ is described ; 
but in the words “for ever sat down at the right hand 
of GOD” we are struck by the absence of the difficult 
Pauline thought of the Redelivery of the Kingdom. 
Secondly, the writer, in conformity with the words of 
the Gospels, speaks of our “ receiving a kingdom which 
cannot be shaken ”—faouwnrela aoadevtoc® This king- 
dom, the reward of Christ’s followers, is spoken of, in 
words for which St. Paul’ furnishes a precedent, as “the 
heavenly Jerusalem,” ® which is ours by the assurance of 
faith, though the earthly one be overthrown. This is 
the first trace of a special modification of the thought 
of the Kingdom of Heaven which we shall meet with in 
the immediate sequel, and again later on—the thought 
of a City of Gop. 


a Jas. at. 53 ch 1 Cor. ae odm:, cti1. 26-28. 2 y Pets tga 
Bo Petsas The aMeb: x. 12: 5 1 Cor. xv. 24-28. 
6 Heb. xii. 28 * Gal. iv. 26. 8 Heb. xii. 22. 





REVELATION OF ST. JOHN 105 


IV 


The Apocalypse of St. John remains for consideration. 
It is needless to enumerate the numerous conflicting 
theories as to its interpretation, many of which lie in 
directions widely divergent from that of our historical 
enquiry. The broken Greek in which it is written de- 
tracts little or nothing at all from the deep poetical 
power of the book, inspired by passionate desire for the 
Kingdom of Christ and passionate devotion to his Person. 
As the first Christian philosophy of history, it forms 
a monumental landmark in the development we are 
tracing. In this respect it sums up a development 
begun! by Daniel, and continued in the less known 
Jewish Apocalypses. As Daniel places the vicissitudes 
of the Church of the Old Testament in context with 
the unfolding of the great drama of World-History as 
he saw it, and unveils the meaning of the trials which 
the contact of the Church with the World-Power brings 
forth, and their issue in the everlasting Reign of the Son 
of Man and of the Saints, so the seer of the Christian 
Apocalypse portrays for us not the Kingdom of GoD 
only, but the throes of its birth in the midst of the 
turmoil of battle, physical and spiritual, and its vicissi- 
tudes under the World-Power,—now embodied in the 
Roman State,—over which it is destined in the end to 
triumph. We must take note of the interval of time 
or sympathy or both which separates the seer from 
St. Paul. St. Paul had not, when he wrote the great 
bulk of his letters,2 known the Roman power as a 


WSee Lect. I. p. 27. 
? Philippians is hardly an exception. The first clear traces of this experi- 
ence are in the Second Epistle to Timothy. 


106 REGNUM DEI 


persecuting power. On the contrary, as it seems,! he 
had hoped great things of the Roman Empire, of which 
he himself was a citizen, as a vehicle for the readier 
diffusion of the gospel,—in Rome itself he had felt a 
deep interest? for years before he was able to visit the 
Christian Church there. The Roman State is appar- 
ently that which hinders the outbreak into lawless 
violence of fanatical hatred to the cause of Christ,— 
70 «katéyov,3—and in fact the protecting arm of the 
Roman magistrate had, not once nor twice, shielded 
him from the ferocity of his Jewish compatriots. The 
* heathen magistrate is indeed no proper court of appeal 
to which Christians should resort for justice in civil 
disputes,—that were to seek righteousness from the 
unrighteous,*—but in the administration of the criminal 
law they are the ministers of GOD, and to be obeyed 
as a matter of conscience. Therefore we are to pray 
for emperors “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable 
life in all godliness” ®—perhaps a hint of coming 
danger in St. Paul’s latest years. From St. Paul, the 
Roman citizen, the instinct of good citizenship flows 
down to the Apologists of the next century and pre- 
pares the way for the later alliance between Christianity 
and civil life. But the conditions of the primitive 
Church were such as to retard this tendency. The 
attitude of Daniel toward the cruel empires of the East 
and the sacrilegious encroachments of the Seleucids, of 
the Psalms of Solomon toward the Roman who had 
dared to profane the Holy of Holies, was retaken up 


1 Ramsay, Zhe Church in the Roman Empire, p. 148, etc. (ed. 1), and 
St. Paul the Traveller, p. 139. 

2 Rom. i. 14 and Acts xxiii. IT, etc. 3 2 Thess. ii. 6, 7. 

41 Cor, vi. I sqq. 5 Rom. xiii, I-5. Sr Dimy ie 2 





REVELATION OF ST. JOHN 107 


in a less restrained form in the minor apocalyptic 
writings which fed the Jewish hopes of a coming 
downfall of the enemies of the people of GoD... And 
to many Christians of the first three centuries, either 
actually under official persecution, or without security 
against a renewed outbreak at any moment, the civil 
power appeared mainly as a persecuting power, the 
Empire of the world hung over the followers of Christ 
as Babylon, the devastator of GOD’s inheritance. Of 
this attitude of Christians toward the Imperial Power, 
to which it will be necessary to recur in the Oe 
Lecture, the keynote is struck by the Apocalypse. Its 
way of regarding the heathen power is characteristically | 
Jewish. The Christians are figured as a New Israel. | 
The writer, profoundly Christian, but most deeply 
saturated of all New Testament writers with Jewish 
sympathies, sees, either as accomplished fact or in the 
immediate future, the fall of Jerusalem.2 But more 
than this, he knows—whether in the first shock of the 
terrible announcement or over a retrospect of a whole 
-generation—of the official persecution of Christians ; 
Rome to him is “drunk with the blood of the Saints.” 8 


1 E.g. Ovac. Sibyll, iii. 668 (uuapot Bacidjec) ; Enoch Ixii. 11 (Charles, 
L£ sch. 218) 

? Rey, xi. 1,2. The measured temple may perhaps signify the Christian 
Jews. 

5 It is beside the purpose of these Lectures to discuss the date or composi- 
tion of the Apocalypse ; the position taken up by the writer in a review of 
Volter (Critical Review, Jan. 1895) is still held by him. The difficulty of 
reconciling the indications which point respectively to the Neronic and 
Domitian dates may be due to the use by the seer, writing under Domitian, 
of earlier materials. This is too thoroughly in keeping with the phenomena 
of apocalyptic literature to be set aside as very improbable. But the book 
as it stands is too entirely the work of its final author to encourage us to 
hope that the derivative passages can be disengaged with any certainty 
from their present context. In particular, the hypothesis of a non-Christian 


108 REGNUM DEI 


The book is written in expectation of the imminent 
Return of Christ. The keynote “Behold I come 
quickly” persists from the beginning to the end of the 
prophecy. Accordingly, the outlook of the seer is 
primarily upon the events of the present or immediate 
future,—upon the events passing or which “ must shortly 
come to pass.”—“ The time is at hand ”—so the book 
begins and so it ends2 The structure of the book 
merits attention at this point as bearing on the question 
of its interpretation. After the prefatory admonitions 
of the Spirit to the seven Churches the vision of what is 
to come to pass hereafter begins, in the form of the 
opening by the Lamb of the Book and of its seven 
seals. As each is opened an angel of vengeance upon 
the earth rides forth. At the fifth+ the voices of the 
slaughtered saints are heard crying for speedy vengeance 
for their blood ; at the sixth there is a pause,® amid terrify- 
ing signs of thickening doom, while the hundred and 
forty-four thousand are sealed against the destruction 
impending upon the earth, and the multitude of the re- 
deemed from every nation appear before the Throne in 
Heaven. At the seventh seal,6 a new series of seven 
trumpets begins, each bringing woe to the earth. Again 
the sixth trumpet marks a pause,’ and seven thunders 
utter their voices, but the seer is forbidden to write 
then The seventh trumpet appears to usher in the 
End. Voices announce the Messianic Reign over all the 


Jewish original document appears quite gratuitous. Nor can it be said that 
the Neronic date for the whole book, in spite of the present tendency to 
revert to the tradition of Irenaeus, is wholly argued out of court. 

1 See Rey. iii. 11, xxii. 7, 12, 20, and compare ii. 25 and 26. 

Mi it, .35.Kxi1. 10,10; 3 Chaps. iv., v. 4 vi. 9 sqq. 

Sais Ea 6 viii. I. fixes. de uy. 





Wer 





REVELATION OF ST. JOHN 109 


earth; the vision of the Ark of the Covenant, the 
Wonder of the Man-child, the war of Michael against 
the Dragon—the appearance of the Beast and the 
False Prophet, the vision of the Lamb upon Mount 
Zion, pass before us in quick succession.2 Three 
angels fly forth in mid-heaven, the angel of the 
Eternal Gospel, the angel of the fall of Babylon, and 
the angel of the Judgment.’ The blessing upon those 
who die in the Lord introduces the vision of the Son of 
Man upon his white cloud, the harvest of the earth 
is reaped, and its vintage gathered for the winepress of 
the wrath of GoD. But now begins yet another series 
of seven, the bowls in which the wrath of Gop is 
accomplished.* The plagues fall upon the earth, the 
sea, the rivers, the sun; upon Rome, on the Euphrates 
—which is dried up that the kings may pass to the 
war of the great day of Armagedon. The last bowl® 
is poured upon the air, and with the judgment of 
Babylon the Harlot all is finished, and preparation is 
made for the marriage feast of the Lamb.° But first 
the Word of GoD goes forth to battle and overthrows 
the Beast and the False Prophet and all the kings of 
the earth’ Then the Dragon, Satan, is bound, and 
the abyss sealed over him, for a thousand years. The 
martyrs and confessors come to life, and reign with 


Christ a thousand years. “ This is the first resurrec- 
1 Rev, xi. 19; contrast Jer. ili. 16. Chaps. xii.—xiv. 
8 xiv. 6-12. 4 Chap. xv. 
5 xvi. 17. 6 Chap. xix. 


7 xix. 11-21. The Beast and False Prophet are cast into the lake of fire. 
This shows that Satan, here as before, is not to be identified with the 
Beast. See xx. 10. 

Pxx: (3; 


IIO REGNUM DEI 


tion,” in which they are priests of GOD and of Christ. 
At the end of it Satan is loosed, and the innumerable 
hosts of Gog and Magog are rallied by him to besiege 
the Beloved City. Fire falls from heaven and con- 
sumes them, Satan is thrown into the lake of fire, to be 
tormented with the Beast and the False Prophet for 
ever and ever, and the Universal Resurrection and 
Judgment follow.1. Then the new Creation and con- 
summation of all things are described, the heavenly 
Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb, is revealed, and the 
Vision reaches its end, as it began, in the form of 
an epistle to the saints of Asia. 

Clearly, the End is reached repeatedly.2, Again and 
again all seems to begin de novo, and with each new 
beginning much is repeated. The course of the world 
is viewed as a preparation for the Return of Christ; 
the plagues are the summons addressed to the world to 
repent, the trial of the Faithful whether they will 
endure to the end. The persecuting power, the Beast, 
is apparently the Empire, the False Prophet is the 
embodiment of all that tempts to apostasy,—possibly, 
if the Domitian date be adopted, the Provincial Governor 
moving men to worship the Image of the Emperor. 
The Empire, or throne of the Beast, is struck with 
darkness by the fifth bowl;? but its final judgment 
appears to merge in that of the Harlot* which again 
has been anticipated many chapters back.6 The 
inference which the structure of the Book suggests as 
to its character is unfavourable to any realistic scheme 
of continuous prediction. The whole arrangement of 


1 Rev. xx. II-I5. 2 Chaps. vi., xi., xvi., xix. 
3 xvi. 10, 4 Chap. xviii. 5 xiv. 8, 





REVELATION OF ST. JOHN III 


its contents defies literalism. All is figurative, inter- 
pretative; presupposing facts rather than * writing 
history before the event.” But its interpretation for 
that very reason is not exclusively bound to the facts 
primarily under contemplation; it finds its application 
to the various phases which are assumed in the course 
of the centuries by an antithesis which is for all 
time. 

It is now necessary to consider some details directly 
bearing upon our subject. 

1, The Christians are a kingdom of Priests. We 
noticed ? this conception at the outset of our survey of 
the Old Testament antecedents of the Christian con- 
ception of the Kingdom of GoD. With the partial 
exception of a phrase in the First Epistle of St. Peter,’ 
this is the only recurrence of the Old Testament 
thought in a New Testament book. It is to be noted 
that the thought is placed by the seer of the Apocalypse 
in the closest relation with Christ’s reign on earth for 
the thousand years, “thou hast made them unto our 
Gop a kingdom and Priests, and they shall reign on 
earth,” * and again,“ they shall be priests of GoD and 
of Christ, and shall reign with him the thousand years.” ® 
That they who are Christ’s shall reign with him when 
he comes in his Kingdom we have learned from the 
Lord himself and from St. Paul;® but the priesthood 
is a new feature; it has in common with the passage 
where it occurs in Exodus the thought of unbroken 

1 Rev. i. 6, v. 10, xx. 6. 2) leet. lap 12: 
® 1 Pet. ii. 9 ; see the latter part of Hort’s very interesting note on the 
words, pp. 125, 126. 


4 Rev. v. Io. Pxx),0: 
® Rey, i. 9 refers to the present reign ‘‘ in patience,” 





RrZ REGNUM DEI 


attendance upon GoD, and the closest access to 
him. 

2. The utterance, familiar by frequent quotation 
from the English Version, that “the kingdoms of this 
world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
Christ,” has suggested to some the early certitude of the 
eventual conquest by the Church of the powers which 
then seemed likely to crush her by force of persecution, 
and in particular the conversion to Christ of the Empire 
of Rome. Or in modern times men have seen in the 
passage the promise of a sanctification of human life, 
and of the reign of Christ in a purified and ennobled 
civil and political society. But text and context alike 
forbid us to read into the passage before us ideas 
which however true and inspiring in themselves, are 
apart from its direct reference. The Revised Version 
correctly renders the true Greek Text: “The kingdom 
(singular) of this world is become [the kingdom] of our 
Lord and of his Christ,” in other words the “ dominion 
over” this world has passed into his hands. The 
context? refers this to the Return of Christ “in his 
kingdom”; the underlying thought is that of the 
Messiah at GOD’s right hand, whose enemies are made 
his footstool, and who rules the nations with a rod of 
iron® The verse is strongly and exclusively eschato- 
logical, and it belongs to the immediate antecedents of 
the great judgment.* 

3. Prominent in the imagery of the book, alike at 
its beginning and ending, is the Heavenly City, the 
New Jerusalem, which here, as in the Epistle to the 


1 Rey. xi. 15. 2 See ver. 17, and-xii. Io. 
#)Ps./ex, U,vil, (9); Rev. ait acxt (tS: 5 iil, 12) xan een; 


REVELATION OF ST. JOHN 113 


Hebrews, is the embodiment of the completed Kingdom 
of Gop. It belongs to the regeneration, the new 
Genesis, in which the new heavens and new earth take 
the place of the old. 

4. But before the appearance of the Heavenly 
Jerusalem, which is the final Kingdom of Gop, the 
reign of Christ has had a full realisation of its own. 
Between the Harmagedon of the seventh Bowl? and 
the final victory over the hosts of Gog and Magog,? 
between the first Resurrection of the just? and the 
final resurrection of all mankind to Judgment,‘ comes 
the reign of Christ on earth, with its centre in the 
Beloved City,? for a thousand years during which Satan 
is bound. To share in this the faithful dead are raised : 
“this is the first resurrection.” The latter thought 
we have already met with in the Jewish eschatology 
of the visible reign of the Messiah. The _ thou- 
sand years occur in the Slavonic book of Enoch 
which is ascribed to a date slightly earlier than 
the earliest probable date of the Revelations, and 
more vaguely in the contemporary Apocalypse of 
Baruch? 

It is hard to answer satisfactorily the question of the 
true meaning of the passage. The general disposition 
in the first centuries of the Church was, as we shall see, 
to understand the passage quite literally. Those who 
rejected the authority of the book did so largely on the 

1 Rev. xvi. 16, 17. aie. S. 3 xx, 4, 6, cf. v. 14. 

ers; EI, 13 Sex 9; 

6 See Charles, Eschatology, pp. 201-204, 349-352, 270-275, 286. Itis 
very doubtful what parts of Slavonic Enoch, Apoc. Baruch, and 4 Ezra are 
of earlier date than the Apocalypse of St. John, more especially if the 


Neronic date for the latter is a possible one. 


8 


114 REGNUM DEI 





ground of this passage. But it may be questioned 
whether, taking the Apocalypse simply as it stands, the 
literal interpretation is necessarily the true one. To 
begin with, as we have said, the general arrangement 
of the book defies literalism in detail. It is urged? 
moreover with reason that a thousand years is a round 
number, lending itself readily to figurative use. In 
any case, if we can distinguish the thousand years’ 
reign from the reign of GoD Almighty proclaimed ? 
before the thousand years begin, it constitutes a more 
marked distinction than we find anywhere else in the 
New Testament between the Kingdom of Christ and 
the Kingdom of Gop. 

The full realisation of GoD’s Kingdom was not to be 
looked for on earth, so the Lord had taught, and 
St. Paul and St. John had but followed his teaching. 
In this life, the reign of Christ was spiritual, inward ; 
visible in the realisation of that character which springs 
from a life hid with Christ in GOD, the character which 
ideally the Body of Christ exhibits in all his members. 
Is the millennial reign of the Apocalypse, as Augustine 
holds, but the expression in a concrete image of this 
spiritual truth? or is it no image at all, but to be 
taken, as Justin and Irenaeus accepted it, in literal 
realism? or in a semi-realistic sense as the prophecy 
of the imperial power of the Catholic Church? These 


1 Dr. Stanton argues (1) that Christ does not leave Gop’s right hand to 
reign for the thousand years. But xix. 11, 21 and xx. 4, combined with 
y. 10, make this very doubtful ; (2) that it is not said where the thousand 
years’ reign has its scene. But it is on earth (v. 10) and in Jerusalem 
(xx. 9). 

2 Rey. xix. 6. But xix. 11, 21 lead on to the picture of Christ’s return 
to reign on earth. 

3 See above, Lect. II. pp. 53 sqq., 71-4. 


REVELATION OF ST. JOHN 115 


were the alternatives imposed by the authority of 
the Apocalypse upon all who shared the seer’s faith 
that the Christ must set up a visible Kingdom on 
earth, a Kingdom in which should accumulate the 
divine power by which good should finally triumph 
over evil. 





LECTURE. IV 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE FIRST FOUR 
CHRISTIAN CENTURIES 


117 


* wh ea hy 
ag, om ie mAs uy aes % : 
Pe sous, F 
ry nhs A ‘ Lin ' _ 
oe pe: Na 4 ee. 









And no one asks his fellow any more : 
‘‘Where is the promise of His Coming?” but _ 
“Was He revealed in any of His lives 

As Power, as Loye, as Influencing Soul?” 


MavOdvw, pn" ev 7 viv dupOopuer olklfovres moder Néyeto, TH 

2 Keen, éret iio ye ovdamod oluar airhy elvar. "AAN, Fv 0 ey, ev 
3 tcwo mapadetyua dvaxetrar TS Bovdouéve dpa Kal dp@vre éavrdv Kaz 
Siadéper dé oddév etre Tou eorw etre Cora’ Ta yap Tabryo povno Av 7 

G@ dno 6é obdeulac. 


118 


LEGTURE, PY. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE FIRST FOUR 
CHRISTIAN CENTURIES 


Son of man, what is this proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, 
The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth ?—EZEK, xii. 22. 


THE Kingdom of GoD has, in the course of Christian 
History, received three principal interpretations. It 
has been identified firstly with the perfect reign of |\ 
GOD in heaven after the Last Judgment, secondly with 
a visible reign of Christ on earth between his second 
coming and the Last Judgment, thirdly with the 
Visible Church on earth between the first and the 
second coming of Christ. Of these three, the first has 
been the most persistent, and even when partially set 
aside in favour of one or of the other two, it has been 
recognised, not only in theological thought but in 
popular language and the unstudied utterances ot 
hymns and prayers, as ultimate and supreme. But 
in the period which we are to consider to-day, the 
Christian imagination was in many quarters and for 
long periods held spellbound by the second. 

The belief in a visible earthly reign of Christ to be 
inaugurated by the Second Advent and a “first resur- 
rection,”—the belief known, from one detail which was 


a common element in it, as Millenniarism or Chiliasm, 
119 


120 REGNUM DEI 





but which is better designated simply as Realistic 
Eschatology, was closely associated with belief in the 
imminence of the Second Advent. The two beliefs 
were in themselves quite independent, and either was 
tenable without the other. St. Paul for instance held, 
at any rate when he wrote his earlier Epistles,! that the 
return of Christ would certainly come in the lifetime 
of many who were then living. But as we have seen, 
not only is there no trace of Millennarian belief in his 
writings, but his belief as to the Kingdom of Christ is 
so formulated as to positively exclude the supposition 
that a millennium of any kind was part of it? We 
may in fact go so far as to say that belief in the early 
return of our Lord was quite universal in the Church 
of the Apostolic age, and was only very slowly and 
reluctantly surrendered. But we are by no means 
justified in inferring that belief in the Visible Reign 
prevailed to the same extent. Our materials for know- 
ledge of the beliefs of the Christians of the first two 
centuries are not exhaustive, and what generalisations 
we may found upon those materials must be made 
with caution and held subject to the probability of 
fresh light being thrown upon the premises of our 
inference by further discovery. But subject to these 
warnings against hasty generalisation, it may safely be 
said that the Eschatology which prevailed in the early 
Church was realistic in a very high degree. The 
realism in question was in part due to a common and 

1y Thess. 21, 19, iv. 153 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52, 1. 8; Rom: augpemee 
Phil. iii. 21; in 2 Cor. v. 3, 4 there is uncertainty as to the Advent 
occurring in the lifetime of the Apostle ; see Waite’s note in Steaker’s 


Comm. 


2 Supra, Lect. IT. pp. 52, 53- 


ees 


APOCALYPSE AND MILLENNIUM 121 


legitimate religious instinct, which prompts men to 
clothe spiritual truths in concrete and tangible form, 
and to accept authoritative words in their literal mean- 
ing unless some strong and clear reason compels them 
to set it aside in favour of a less obvious sense. This 
tendency was very strong in the Jewish mind, which 
was especially marked by its tendency to the concrete. 
And although the cleft between Jew and Christian 
widened rapidly, and became by degrees impassable, 
nearly every Christian Church had originally formed 
round a nucleus of Christian Jews or proselytes, and 
it is difficult exactly to estimate the extent to which 
popular Christian thought was leavened by ideas 
derived from this source. At any rate, the Christian 
additions which are traceable in much Jewish apoca- 
lyptic literature prove that Jewish books of this kind 
were widely read and copied among Christians, and 
that Jewish eschatology was not without influence 
upon popular Christian expectations of the Last 
Things.” The prevalence of Realistic Eschatology, 
therefore, is not exclusively to be set down to the 
influence of the Revelation of St. John. But certainly 


l’Tovdalw mp&roy, Rom. i. 16, ii. 9, 10, is the principle on which the 
Apostle uniformly proceeds in the Acts (xiii. 46). The synagogues of 
Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, the proseucha of Philippi, the synagogues of 
Thessalonica, Beroea, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, were the point of 
departure in the principal Churches founded personally by St. Paul. 
Jewish influences were strong in Galatia and Colossae. St. Paul assumes 
that the Roman Christians were grounded in Jewish knowledge (Rom. 
vii. I, 4; see art. RoMANS in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible). See also 
Rev. ii. 9, 20, iii. 9. 

2 The Sibylline Oracles and the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs are 
perhaps the most conspicuous examples: but for the whole subject, which 
is too vast to be more than alluded to here, see the references in Stanton, 
Jewish and Christian Messiah ; Charles, article ‘‘ Apocalyptic Literature ” 
(in Zncycl. Biblica) and his Eschatology, etc. 


122 REGNUM DEI 


its hold upon the mind of the early Church was very 
greatly strengthened by the literal and realistic inter- 
pretation of the imagery of the Apocalypse, and 
especially of those passages in it which speak of the 
“first resurrection” and of the reign of Christ and his 
saints upon earth for a thousand years.1 The question 
of Realistic Eschatology was accordingly closely con- 
nected, though not quite to be identified, with that of 
the authority of the Apocalypse itself. The general 
history of the New Testament Canon, or at any rate of 
those books whose authority was for a time in dispute, 
is one of widespread doubt at first, gradually settling 
down into universal acceptance.? Or to put the matter 
differently, the number of books accepted by some 
Church or other was at first considerably larger than 
the number eventually accepted by all® As the 
Churches compared notes, certain books, originally 
known and read in some Churches only, came to be 
either accepted by all, or rejected by all. To this 
general process the Apocalypse forms a singular 
exception. Apart from the Syrian Church, which 
apparently did not receive it, its original reception in 
the Churches of the Greco-Roman world was general.* 


1 See Lect. III. p. 113 sq. 

2 For the general history of the Canon, and of the New Testament 
‘* Antilegomena,” I must be content to refer to the standard Introductions, 
to Westcott on the Canon, Sanday’s Bampton Lectures, etc. 

3 For example, the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, the Dzdache, the 
Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospels according to the Hebrews and the 
Egyptians, the Apocalypse of Peter, all enjoyed local reception for a time. 
See Sanday (zt supra), p. 26 sqq. Of the oldest MSS. of the Greek 
Bible, & contained Barnabas and the Shepherd, A the First and ‘‘ Second” 
Epistles of Clement. But see Westcott, Canon, Appendix B. 

4T must refer for details to Westcott on the Cano, esp. p. 241 (ed. 4); 
Zahn, Geschichte d. N.T. Kanons, i. pp. 220-261. 


~~ 


APOCALYPSE AND MILLENNIUM 123 


The rejection of the book by the so-called Alogi of 
Asia Minor was apparently doctrinal in its motives,— 
and in part due to the high value set upon it by the 
Montanists.!. But although Origen himself received it, 
as the influence of his theology spread, objections to 
the book increased in the Greek Church. Origen’s 
great pupil Dionysius of Alexandria? was unable to 
believe that it could be the work of the same John who 
had written the Fourth Gospel. Of the fourth century 
theologians, Eusebius vacillates on the subject. Cyril 
of Jerusalem (348) passes it over, as also does the 
Council of Laodicea (perhaps about 362), and Gregory 
of Nazianzus.* His fellow-countryman Amphilochius 
of Iconium says, “Some insert it, but most class it as 
spurious.” This statement is certainly surprisingly 
strong; we may compare it with that of Sulpitius 
Severus,® “A Plerisque aut stulte aut impie non recipi- 
tur.” His horror contrasts strangely with the fact he 
records, but at any rate guarantees his freedom from 
colouring bias. Athanasius (in 367),° who accepts it 
without question, shows the decline of Origen’s in- 
fluence in his native Egypt; Epiphanius shortly after- 
wards leads a reaction in its favour, and Basil, Gregory 


1 This would also go to explain their hostility to the Gospel of St. John, 
the mainstay of the doctrine of the Paraclete. On the Alogi see Sanday, 
Bampton Lectures, pp. 15, 64 sq., and reff., also Zahn (wt supra). On 
Gaius of Rome see below, p. 127, note 1. The ‘‘ Alogi” were a party 
rather than a sect. The name was invented for them by Epiphanius. 

2? Euseb. H. £. Ill. xxviii., VII. xxiv., xxv. 3 see also M‘Giffert’s note 
(19) on III. xxiv. (in Wicene and Post-Nicene Library, series 2, vol. i.). 

3 7. E, 11. xxv., xxxix. 6, etc. 

4 Carm, xii. 31. This, and the other passages referred to in the text are 
brought together by Westcott, Cazon, Appendix D. 

5 Hist. Sacr. ii. 31 (¢c. A.D. 403). 

§ Letter 39 (in Wicene Library, vol. iv.). 





124 REGNUM DEI 


of Nyssa, Didymus, Cyril of Alexandria, and others 
follow. Chrysostom however makes no use of the book, 
nor does even Theophylact as late as the eleventh 
century; but with that exception, its authority has 
stood firm in the East since the year 500.1 Briefly 
then the volume of pre-Nicene testimony is strongly 
on the side of the Apocalypse; the remarkable fact ~ 
is the growth of a strong reaction against it in the 
later third century and in the fourth, The main 
disturbing cause was unquestionably the growing 
discredit of Realistic Eschatology, and the support 
which that Eschatology derived from a literal con- 
struction of certain parts of the Apocalypse. The 
objections to the book were gradually overcome in 
proportion as its literal interpretation gave way to a 
figurative. The early attitude of Churchmen toward 
the Apocalypse is, accordingly, to be understood by 
reference to their eschatological prepossessions — in 
short to the more or less realistic way in which they 
conceived of the Kingdom of Christ. 


II 


Briefly, it may be said that the Realistic Eschatology 
prevailed in the Church generally for two centuries 
and a half, and in the Western Church for four cen- 
turies—that is until the time of Augustine, who shared 
it himself, until, as he expressly tells us, reflexion led 
him to a different mind on the subject.2 His vast 


1 The influence of Dionysius the. Areopagite (about A.D. 500) doubtless 
helped to clinch the reviving authority of the book in the East. 
2 See Lect. V. p. 170 sq. 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 125 


influence coupled with other more general causes, 
carried the Church’s mind in a new direction; Millenn- 
arianism quickly lost ground, and ceased to be even 
a tolerated doctrine. The general causes to which I 
have referred operated in the East before they much 
affected the simpler mind of the Western Church. In 
the East, Millenniarism received its first shock in 
the battle against Montanism. Its final extinction 
was the work of the spiritual and philosophical theo- 
logy which owed its great stimulus to Origen. Till 
about the last third of the second century, then, was its 
time of unchallenged strength. It is possible to cite 
prominent writers who show no trace of it in their 
extant writings. Clement of Rome, who regards the 
Apostolic succession as a precaution 7 case the exist- 
ing successors of the Apostles should fall asleep, 
evidently believed in the probability of a speedy return 
of Christ. But of his millennial or earthly Reign he 
says nothing. Ignatius, in his seven epistles, says 
nothing of it, nor does Polycarp. But we cannot, in 
view of the extreme brevity and occasional character 
of their writings, be sure that their silence was inten- 
tional. On the contrary, we must allow some weight 
to the connexion of Polycarp with Papias and with 
Irenaeus, and to the possibility that the belief which the 
two last-named held so strongly was shared by other 
prominent Asian Christians as well. Barnabas expects 
the sixth day, that is the sixth millennium, of the 
world’s history to be followed by the Sabbath of 


1Clem. Rom. Z/. xliv. 2, dav xoiujOwow. See however xlii. 3, where 
the Apostles after Pentecost go forth preaching tiv Bacielav Tod Ocod 
wEXecv Epxer Oat, 





126 REGNUM DEI 


Christ’s power! The Roman visionary Hermas is 
saturated with realistic expectations of the Last 
Things. The prayer of the Avdayn tov 18 atroo- 
TovAwy, “Let grace come and this world pass away,”? 
would at any rate come naturally from the lips of those | 
who hoped for a Reign of Christ on earth—more natur- 
ally than the prayer “ pro mora finis” comes from the 
intensely millennarian Tertullian. The second epistle 
(so-called) of Clement* bears traces of the same in- 
fluence. Justin himself holds to the millennial belief, 
though recognising that some Christians disbelieve it.* 
Papias holds it in its fulness; Cerinthus the Jewish- 
Christian syncretist expresses it in a crassly material 
form, yet hardly more crass than that of Irenaeus 
himself. The opinion of Cerinthus is quoted by the 
Roman presbyter Gaius who says, in his tract against 
the Montanists :— 


“But Cerinthus also, through Revelations written, as 


1 Barn. xv. This Sabbath will be followed by the eighth day—z.e. the 
new world. The scheme of seven days, answering to those of creation, 
for the course of earthly history is, if not a fundamental, at any rate a nearly 
constant element in all forms of Chiliasm. The first division of the kind 
is the tex weeks of Ethiop. Enoch xci. (see Charles, Esch. 205), of which 
seven ‘‘ embrace all events from the creation till the Advent of the Messi- 
anic kingdom.” But in the Slavonic Enoch, dating from before A.D. 50 
(zbzd. p. 261 sqq.), we have the six ‘‘ days” of history, each of a thousand ~ 
years (see Ps. Ixxxix. 3, LXX, and various readings), to be followed by the 
Messianic Sabbath of the seventh thousand. Compare below, Lect. V. 
p. 170, and Lect. VII. p. 298, on Abbot Joachim. 

? The phrase alone (c. x.) would be inconclusive. But combined with 
the prayer (ix., x.) that the Church may be gathered from the ends of the 
earth into the Kingdom of Gop, and with the reference to a first resurrec- 
tion (xvi. 6) it points decisively to the thought of a future reign of Christ 
onearth. Tertullian’s prayer, Afo/. xxxix. 

3. §§ 5, 12, 17. There is no express reference to a millennium. 

4 Tryph. \xxx., \xxxi. Compare his attitude toward Ebionites, zdzd. 
xlviii. 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 127 


he would have us believe, by a great Apostle, brings 
before us marvellous things which he pretends were 
shown him by angels; alleging that. after the Resur- 
rection the Kingdom of Christ is to be on earth, and 
that the flesh, dwelling in Jerusalem, is to be subject 
to desires and pleasures. And being an enemy to the 
Scriptures of GOD, writing to deceive men, he says 
that there is to be a space of a thousand years for 
marriage festivals.” 

Apart from doubtful questions which have been 
raised here, it would appear from this passage that 
Cerinthus pressed the language of the Apocalypse in 
its most literal and material sense’ But he is only 
treating the Apocalypse as Irenaeus himself treated the 
prophecies of the Old Testament. Irenaeus quotes 
elders—that is Papias and his authorities—as reporting 
the following, on the authority of John, as the teaching 
of Christ himself :— 

“The days will come when vines shall grow, each 
having ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten 


1 Eus. #. Z, 111. xxviii. The preponderance of modern opinion is that 
Gaius refers to the Apocalypse of St. John, which he accuses Cerinthus of 
fabricating under the name of the Apostle. This is supported by the 
words of Dionysius (s¢pra, p. 123, note), who, however, dissociates himself 
from a view so repellent to Christian instinct. Gaius was answered by 
Hippolytus, who, although opposed like Gaius to the Montanists, shared in 
a less crass form their millenniarist beliefs (see his Heads against Gaius, 
vii., in Berlin ed. of Hippol. 1, n. p. 247. He repudiates the idea that 
Satan was bound at the first Advent ; but treats the thousand years as ‘‘one 
perfect day.” Lightfoot’s doubt of the existence of Gaius is no longer 
tenable: S. Clem. of Rome, ii. 387, etc.). Zahn (Kanon, i, 230 sqq.) 
endeavours to show, from the silence of Irenaeus, etc., that Gaius was 
wrong in attributing these views to Cerinthus. But Irenaeus would 
hardly have included Chiliasm among the evvors of Cerinthus. Into the 
relation between Gaius and the ‘‘ Alogi” it is beside our present purpose 
to enquire. 


128 REGNUM DEI 





thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand shoots, 
and on each one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, 
and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, 
and every grape when pressed will give twenty-five 
firkins of wine. And when any one of the saints 
shall lay hold upon a cluster, another shall cry out, 
‘I am a better cluster; take me; bless the Lord 
through me!’ (And in like manner) that a grain of 
wheat will produce ten thousand stalks and each stalk 
ten thousand ears . . .” and so forth. 

He identifies his source as Papias “in his fourth 
book”—-and Papias adds, he tells us, “now these 
things are credible to believers.” 

“For if,” he continues, “the lion, that fierce animal, 
is to feed upon straw, of what quality must the wheat 
itself be, whose straw shall serve as suitable food for 
lions?” 1 pe dll anarew 

The cycle of beliefs we are considering is clearly 
a survival of the Jewish inability to realise ideas except 
by the aid of concrete forms, as we see it exemplified 
in the Apocalyptic literature which, as we have said, the 
Christians borrowed and adapted from Jewish sources. 
Jewish imagery therefore, and Jewish expectations of 
the Messianic Reign, fired the Christian imagination, 
while the Christian Church took the place of the Jewish 
people as the heirs of the promised Kingdom. 

The essential elements of the Realistic Eschatology ; 
were mainly the following :— 

lTren. Haer, V. xxxiii. 4, cf. 1. This is a pre-Christian picture of 
material felicity. It appears in substance in Ethiop. Enoch x. (second 
cent. B.c.), and in the Apocalypse of Baruch xxix. See Charles, Zsch. 


pp. 189, 271. Its adoptioh by Papias illustrates by contrast the absence 
of this kind of credulity from the pages of the New Testament. 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 129 


1. A final, presently impending, and terrible array 
of the World-Power in all its strength against the 
Church of Christ. 

2. The imminent return of Christ. 

- 3. That Christ will overcome the World-Power, and 
establish a glorious kingdom on earth. 

4. The First Resurrection of the saints to share in 
this kingdom. 

5. The close of the kingdom to be followed by the 
universal Resurrection and Judgment. 

Among the more variable and to some extent 
subordinate elements we may mention :— 

6. The conception of the world’s history as made 
up of ‘seven days, typified by the seven days of 
Creation.! 

7. The enemies of the kingdom of Christ, and 
specially the Antichrist who is to lead them 

8. The place, duration, and extent of the kingdom 
of Christ. Justin, who holds that it will be set up 
at Jerusalem and last a thousand years, follows the 
prevailing view, as did Cerinthus. But Montanus 
looked for its establishment at Pepuza and Tymion in 
his own country. 

This Realistic Eschatology was favoured by the 
conditions of the first Christian centuries. Firstly, 
there was as yet no comprehensive theology to bring 
to bear upon it any reasoned principles of exegesis, or 


1 See above, p. 126, note I. 

2 See Lect. I. p. 26, note 2, and Lect. II. p. 57, note 2, etc. 

5 The pre-Christian tradition was either indefinite as to the duration, or 
specified four hundred years (4 Ezra vii. 28 sq. ; see Charles, Esch. p. 
286), a number founded on the years of captivity in Egypt, Gen. xv. 13 
combined with Ps. xc. 15, or a thousand years (see above, p. 113, note 6). 


9 


130 REGNUM DEI 


to place Eschatology in context and analogy with a 


consistently framed Christian view of life and existence. 
Theology of course there was, in the sense of profound 
religious reflexion upon the facts of the Christian 
Religion; Ignatius and Irenaeus are examples that will 
occur to all. But before the rise of the Alexandrian 
school and its great teacher Origen, no one had 
endeavoured to reach a “unified consciousness” in 
which the best attainable knowledge, and the best 
philosophical method then available, should be applied 
to interpret Christian truth, and correlated with its 
principles. To a theology in this sense, the greater 
Christian minds have always aspired at the creative 
and vigorous periods of the Church’s history. Origen 
was the first of these. He had no doubt predeces- 
sors, partly in the Gnostics, partly in the Apologists. 
Both of these in their way aimed at a union of 
Christian with philosophic thought. And it may be 
remarked in passing that, while naturally we neither 
expect nor find among the Gnostics any millennarian 
eschatology, the Apologists of the second century, as a 
class, give it very little prominence in their writings. 
But neither they nor the Gnostics were likely to 
exercise much influence in weakening its hold upon the 
Church. The Gnostics as a class had in common the 
tendency to express in Christian language non- 


Christian-—what passed for philosophic—ideas. They 


were too obviously out of sympathy with the inmost 
convictions of the Church to affect its prevalent belief 


1Tt was hardly within their purpose to do so. Had we only his 
Apologies, we should not have known of Justin’s Chiliasm, His pupil 
Tatian betrays no trace of it. 





ees a 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 131 


on the kingdom of Christ. The Apologists had in 
common the task of proving that the Christians were 
good citizens and that theirs was the most reasonable 
religion. In discharging this task they aimed at 
expressing Christian ideas in philosophical language. 
But both as philosophers and as theologians they 
failed to sound the full depth of the questions they 
handled, and except prospectively, as precursors of 
Origen and his school, they did not leaven or modify 
the convictions of the average Christian. There was 
then before A.D. 200 no widespread influence in 
Christian thought to counteract the realism of early 
Christian Eschatology. 

But secondly, outside the Church, the circumstances 
of the time were such as to foster it. Far more than 
the Middle Ages, the pre-Nicene centuries deserve to be 
spoken of as the “Ages of Faith.” The Christians, 
though daily increasing in numbers, were still a minority, 
and to become a Christian meant a wrench from many 
social ties, often great personal sacrifice, sometimes 
imminent risk of life. Each convert as he entered the 
Church felt that he was joining a body united by a 
strict standard of conduct, the members of which were 
under close mutual observation; a body in which the 
standard of conduct was enforced in extreme cases by 
formal discipline, in all cases by the discipline of a 
severe public opinion. The Christian body was com- 
pact and keenly conscious of itself, in face of a 
suspiciously hostile public, of a government never 
friendly, and not infrequently active in measures of 
suppression. That the little flock thus placed should 
look passionately for the kingdom promised them 


132 REGNUM DEI 


by Christ, that they should hold tenaciously to the 
graphic and definite descriptions of its glories which 
they had received, and expect its realisation not at the 
far off consummation of a historical process in continuous 
development, but as the result of a convulsive breach 
with history which would by a sudden catastrophe 
reverse the existing supremacy of the powers opposed 
to Christ, was surely but natural and to be expected. 
Persecution at once braced the faith of the early Christians, 
and kept alive their realistic conception of the kingdom 
of Christ. Crude realism is, in short, incidental to 
naive and vigorous faith. It may be directed to different 
objects, but where the faith of the simple crowd is deep 
and strong, some alloy of the kind will almost always 
accompany it. A well-known modern critical historian, 
who is distinguished among critics by his keen percep- 
tion of religious character, observes that nearly all great 
religious personalities, in whom the essence of Christian 
faith has been strong, have been apt to combine with 
it some element which other Christians, perhaps of 
equal spiritual calibre, pronounce incongruous. He 
mentions as examples the neo-Platonic mysticism of. 
some of the great Greek theologians, the predestin- 
arianism of Augustine; instances which some here 
present will be less likely to dispute, whether it be the ~ 
anthropomorphism of the early monks of Egypt, the | 
sabbatarianism of the Puritans, the extravagant 
devotion to the Blessed Virgin of many of the best 
minds of the Middle Ages and of modern Roman 
Catholicism, the furore of the Crusades, the ultramon- 
tane enthusiasm, or the proscription of even moderate 
use of wine as sinful, will occur variously to different 





PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 133 


minds. The pure essence of the Christian religion, he 
continues, does not “occur free in nature,” its isolation 
is the work of the theological laboratory. What we 
have to learn is that although, if we strip off the bark, 
the sap will cease to flow, the external element is now 
one, now another, but that the essence remains always 
one and the same.! 

The ages of persecution were the ages of faith, and 
their faith, in its strength and intensity, carried along 
with it the incongruous element of millenniarism, an 
element whose realism we may see to be grotesque, 
but which, in however grotesque a form, enshrined a 
genuine religious perception. 


In their realistic picture of the coming kingdom of yv 


Christ, these simple Christians asserted their conviction 
that in spite of appearances, this world is God’s world, 
and its history is in his hands: their conviction that 
the Church of Christ is to inherit the earth, that the 
chequered and unsatisfactory course of its affairs is to 
culminate in the triumph of the holy Will of GoD, and 
that in whatever way, at any rate in some way the 
temporal will be organically linked on to the eternal. 
None the less, millenniarism was certain, sooner or 
later, to fade out of the Christian consciousness. To 
begin with, it lacked adequate authority in the New 
Testament as a whole. Apart from the Apocalypse, 
the interpretation of which was not beyond question, 
while influential teachers were ready to concede the 
millennial interpretation only at the expense of the 
authority of the book itself, the most clearly formu- 
lated eschatological scheme in the New Testament, 


1 Harnack, Dogmengesch. iii. 213 sq. note I. 





134 REGNUM DEI 


that of St. Paul, left no place for itt The Jewish 
features which characterised the belief were increasingly 
felt to be alien to the spirit of the Greek Churches, and 
to the spirituality of the Gospel itself. When persecu- 
tion no longer kept it alive——when the active hostility 
of the State no longer counteracted the natural Christian 
instinct of good citizenship, exemplified in St. Paul,2— 
the old Realistic Eschatology silently melted away. 

Once again, intense as was the Christian instinct to 
which Chiliasm gave articulate form, it was in some 
respects in latent antipathy to the ecclesiastical spirit, 
and waned as that spirit gathered strength: This side 
of millenniarism is apparent in more ways than one. 
Its rejection by rational theology, and by the trained 
theologians, who filled the more important places in the 
Greek Churches in the third and fourth centuries, had 
practically the effect of ranging the clergy in opposition 
to it. In fact millennarianism, by virtue of its direct 
appeal to minds of crass simplicity, was a creed for the 
lay-folk and the simpler sort, and when the religious 
interest was concentrated upon it, it would indirectly 
undermine the interest felt in doctrines requiring a 
skilled class to interpret them. The Apocalyptic spirit 
is in fact closely akin to the spirit of unregulated 
prophesying, and the alliance has been apparent, not 
only in the second century, but in the Middle Ages 
and in modern times as well. 

Once more, a cycle of belief which centred round 
the imminent return of Christ was essentially out of 
sympathy with a Church order. and _ organisation 
calculated for a lasting and permanent state of things. 

1 Supra, Lect. II. p. 52. ? Supra, Lect. III. p. 105 sq. 





PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 135 


Finally, whatever causes tended towards the identifica- 
tion of the Kingdom of Gop with the visible Church, 
for that reason tended to render Chiliasm superfluous 
by satisfying in another way the fundamental instinct 
upon which it was founded,—the desire for the 
realisation on earth of the Kingdom of Gop. 

These tendencies were of course not always, perhaps 
were seldom, present to the minds of the persons 
through whom they took effect. But men seldom 
understand fully all that is implicit in their actions, 
words, or thoughts. And that the tendencies were 
such as I have stated, the experience of the Christian 
centuries forbids a doubt. 

Now during the second century, in face of the pre- 
sence of dangerous separatist movements, the organisa- 
tion of the Church was perfecting itself rapidly ; and 
all who laboured together in this cause,—Chiliasts 
though they might be, like Irenaeus himself,—were 
the conscious or unconscious enemies of Chiliasm. 

Of the two great dangers which were, by their 
pressure, hastening the consolidation of the Churches, 
Gnosticism has already been mentioned incidentally, 
and it is hardly necessary for our immediate purpose 
to say much more. But this is not so with the other 
separatist movement of the second century, known to 
us as Montanism. 

The character and history of the movement are well 
known, but it may be permitted to recall them briefly. 
It originated about the year 160 in Western Phrygia, 
near the country towns of Pepuza and Tymion. The 
Greek Church knew the movement as that of the 
people in Phrygia—vav cata Ppvyac—hence the name 


136 REGNUM DEI 


“ Cataphrygian,” the Eastern equivalent of the Latin 
“Montanist.” The latter name was derived from that 
of the leader Montanus,! who with two ladies of good 


social position, Priscilla and Maximilla, came forward 


to proclaim and prepare for the approaching Advent of 
Christ. They protested vehemently against the increas- 
ing assimilation of the lives of Christians, and the 
discipline of the Church, to the standard of the heathen 
world. Possibly they also complained of the supersession 
of Prophecy by the organised Ministry; on this point 
we are not clearly informed. In doctrine they were 
perfectly orthodox.2, The extravagant personal claims 
of Montanus must be ascribed not to any heretical 
principle, but to a tendency not infrequently seen 
when religious enthusiasm overthrows mental balance. 
They were “ schismatics,” not “ heretics.” 

The main features of Montanism were three. Firstly, 
the “new prophecy.” They proclaimed that the im- 
mediate prelude to the return of Christ was to be a 
signal outpouring of the Spirit, tantamount to a new 
dispensation, and guided no doubt by the words of 
Joel, they looked for its fruits in visions, especially 


1 The Latin cast of these names suggests (not Western extraction but) 
freedom from Greek culture. On the Montanists see Euseb. & Z. Vv. 
xiv.-xix. ; Hippol. Phz/os. x. 21, 22 (a/. 25, 26); Tertullian, adv. Prax., de 
corona, de Pudic., etc., and the later heresiologists from Epiphanius 
onward. Also Bonwetsch, M/ontanismus, and Salmon in Dict. Chr. Biog. 
Montanus is stated to have been a recent convert, and a mutilated ex- 
priest of Cybele (cf. Catullus, Azys), The latter statement, which is not 
contemporary, we have no means of verifying ; the former is not improbable 
in itself. 

? Hippolytus can only accuse them of monarchianism (which may have 
as much foundation as his similar charge against Zephyrinus and Callistus), 
and of paying excessive heed to the prophecies of Montanus, etc., which 
was doubtless true. 





ES 
‘a 
on 
be 
hag 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 137 


during the assemblies for public worship, and in a 
revival of the languishing gift of prophecy. Montanus 
is said to have carried his belief in his inspiration to 
the pitch of claiming to be identical with the Paraclete ; 
“Tam the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit ” 
are the words ascribed to him by his opponents. The 
pathology of religious mania makes the accusation just 
short of incredible.1 The word “ dispensation” is used, 
but the prophetic outpouring was to be but temporary 
—the Advent was so near, “After me,” cried Maxi- 
milla, “there shall be no prophetess more, but the 
Consummation.”* Secondly, the Montanists were 
marked by Puritan Rigorism in morals. They are 
said to have used the strictest discipline, to have 
enjoined strenuous fasting, they forbade second mar- 
riage, and allowed no lapsed penitent a second place 
of repentance, should he again fall into grievous sin. 
They are said to have broken down under persecution 
in some cases: but this is not to be magnified into an 
indictment against the whole body. The movement 
was the first of an unending series of similar move- 
ments of protest, some of which we shall have to notice 
in the sequel; they are all alike in their demand for a 

1 Montanus certainly believed that he was indwelt by the Holy Spirit, 
and doubtless appealed to passages like John xiv. 17, 23. Such extra- 
vagant utterances as éyw elui 6 marnp Kal 6 vldo Kal 6 mapdK\nToo may be 
invented for him by his opponents, but the transition from indwelling to 
identification would be possible in so ill-balanced a mind. 

? The principal phenomena of Montanism are strikingly reproduced in 
the Abbot Joachim of Fiore. See below, Lect. VII. p. 298. 

® Their bitterest enemies even when taunting them with having suffered 
nothing for the Name, admit in the same breath that they have many 
martyrs (Eus. #. Z. v. xvi. 20, cf. 12). The evidence for the breakdown 


of Montanists under persecution belongs to the reign of Decius, when the 
first zeal of the movement was spent (see below, p. 143, note I). 





138 REGNUM DEI 


more visible enforcement of the Holiness of the 
Church. The Holiness of the Church must be seen, 
not in the sacredness of the ordinances but in the lives 
of her members. The demand of these movements is 
for a Holy Society, a “ spiritual Church-Membership.” 
“The Church,” writes their most eloquent spokesman, 
is strictly and primarily the Spirit: “and accordingly 
the Church will remit sins, but the Church in the 
spiritual sense, by the spiritual man, not the Church in 
the sense of the bench of bishops” (samerus episco- 
forum) The Montanists in fact stand up for ruthless 
strictness of principle as against the necessities of 
government, which weighed with the greater Churches 
in their judicious relaxations of disciplinary severity. 
Thirdly, the Montanists were, in relation to the coming 
kingdom of Christ, intense realists. Their entire system 
was dominated by belief in the close approach of the 
Second Advent; and they held fast to the conviction that 
it would inaugurate the Millennial Reign. Montanus 
himself looked for its establishment in Phrygia. Tertul- 
lian, whose Montanism was free from the personal eccen- 
tricities of Montanus, speaks of “the kingdom promised 
to us on earth,—before heaven—in a different state, 
namely after the resurrection, for a thousand years in the 
God-created City Jerusalem brought down from heaven.” 


1 Montanus, expecting the immediate establishment of the Millennial 
Reign at Pepuza, aimed at gathering all the true Church thither, and 
appears actually to have organised a food-supply for the purpose (Eus. 
H, E, Vv. xviii. 2). But this was a feature which was naturally dropped as 
the movement spread. 

* Adv. Marc. iii. 24. It will be noted that, with an inconsistency 
common to other millenniarists (cf. Hippol. de Avjtichr. 44), Tertullian 
here transfers to the Millennial Reign features which in the Apocalypse 
belong to the gexera/ Resurrection. 





PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 139 


The influence of the Montanist movement spread 
very wide. Outside Phrygia, indeed, it appears to 
have laid aside some of its original extravagances ; 
there is no evidence, for example, that the alleged 
identification of Montanus with the Paraclete was 
adopted by his followers outside his own region. But 
we find traces of the movement far and wide. In Gaul 
its activity is said to have been the occasion of a visit of 
Irenaeus to Rome, as some think in the cause of tolera- 
tion, but as others hold to warn Bishop Eleutherus against 
its danger to the peace of the Church! In Rome itself 
it seems to have had a not unfriendly reception for a 
time. Its most prominent representative there, Proclus, 
was followed from Asia Minor by Praxeas, who suc- 
ceeded in obtaining its condemnation by the bishop— 
either Victor or his successor Zephyrinus, but whose 
own Monarchian teaching, according to Montanist 
evidence, did more injury to Roman orthodoxy than 
the teachers whom he successfully opposed In 
Africa Montanism made its most brilliant conquests. 


1 The relation of Irenaeus to the Montanist movement is very obscure. 
He would certainly have no sympathy with its desire to found a new 
schismatic communion (see Haer. IV. xxxiii. 6, 7). But his polemic 
(III. xi. 9) against those who ‘‘ut donum Spiritus frustrentur, quod zz 
noutssimis temporibus secundum placitum Patris effusum est in humanum 
genus... propheticum repellunt Spiritum,” etc., is hardly anti-Montanist 
in its tone. It is probably neutral as regards the new prophecy, and 
directed against the party known later as ‘‘ Alogi” (see above, p. 123, 
note 1). Irenaeus would probably favour treatment of the prophets as 
gentle as circumstances allowed; and this may well have been the tendency 
of the representations of the Gallican Christians to Eleutherus (Eus. %. £. 
V. iii. 4; note the terms of their recommendation of Irenaeus, chap. iv.). 
On the passages in Irenaeus, see Zahn, Kanon, i. 240-242. 

*? Tertull. Adv. Prax. i.: Duo negotia diaboli Praxeas Romae procurauit, 
prophetiam expulit et haeresin intulit ; Paracletum fugauit et Patrem 
crucifixit. 





140 REGNUM DEI 


Here also, it would seem, many who were in full 
communion with the Church were deeply influenced 
by the “new prophecy.” The Acts of Perpetua, who 
suffered with her companions about 202, show un- 
mistakably Montanist features. They are probably 
from the hand of Tertullian the most eminent Church- 
man of Africa, and an ardent Montanist! At what 
date he formally seceded from the Church is uncertain, 
but eventually he became convinced of the corruption 
of the official Christianity, and formed a Montanist 
schism in Africa. His latest writings—de Pudicitia 
for example—are full of bitterness against the laxity 
of the Church’s rulers in dealing with moral offences. 
Montanism lasted longer as a schismatic sect than 
might have been expected from the evanescent nature 
of its predictions. The last Tertullianist church at 
Carthage had returned to Catholic unity in the memory 
of St. Augustine ?—not therefore much before 390. 
But clearly this was a late survival. In the East the 
movement died harder. About A.D. 260 Montanists 
were still common in Asia Minor3 The Edict of 
Constantine was fatal to many weak sects, and Mon- 
tanism appears to have survived it only in its native 
Province. Here, under Justinian, it was stamped out 
with the cruelty of that degenerate age; the bones of 
Montanus and the prophetesses were dug up and burned. 


1 See Robinson’s edition (Zexts and Studies, i. 2, 1891), pp. 47-58. 
That Montanist influence should thus permeate members of the Catholic 
Church is perhaps less surprising than the fact that Irvingites, the modern 
antitype of Montanists, in many cases find it possible to remain in com- 
munion with the Church. 

2 De Haer. \xxxvi. 

3 See Firmilian of Caes. Cappad. in Cypr. Z. 75 (p. 814, Hartel), and 
p. 137, note 3, above. 


} 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 141 


But its decline was in reality due to its spent vitality. 
Its one permanent strength, the rigorist demand for a 
Holy Society, passed into other hands. Novatianism 
and Donatism satisfied the persistent instinct in the 
West, in the East it began to find a new channel in 
the growing attractions of Monasticism, Montanism 
was left without special recommendations. Prophecy 
in due time faded away, and Millenniarism was en- 
feebled by the repeated falsification of its prophecies of 
the approaching end of the world. 

In Montanism, the latent anti-ecclesiastical leaven 
which we noticed in Millenniarism came conspicuously 
to the surface. And the campaign against the move- 
ment necessarily tended to discredit crassly realistic 
eschatological hopes. An interesting example of this in 
the West is the difference between the eschatology of 
Tertullian and that of Cyprian. Cyprian generously 
acknowledged Tertullian as his master in theology. 
Tertullian had in fact taught theology to use the Latin 
tongue,! and Cyprian was in this respect at least his 
spiritual heir. But Cyprian never speaks of the Millennial 
Reign of Christ ; and where he speaks of the Kingdom 
of GOD, it is exclusively in the eschatological sense? 
which we have distinguished as primary, and dominant 


1 «<The lamp which all runners in the sacred race have received is that 
which Tertullian lit and Cyprian trimmed” (Benson, Cyfrian, p. 531). 
Jerome had met an old man who when very young had seen at Rome 
Cyprian’s secretary, then of advanced age. The latter related ‘‘ solitum 
nunquam Cyprianum absque Tertulliani lectione unam praeterisse diem, ac 
sibi crebro dicere Da Magistrum! Tertullianum uidelicet significans ” 
(de uir. tl/ustr. liii.), The name of Tertullian does not occur in Cyprian’s 
extant writings. 

2 Cyprian uses ‘‘regnum” without the addition ‘‘ Dei” or caelorum. 
It is contrasted with the Church on earth ; see De Of. e¢ Eleem. ix. : Eos 
Dominus, cum iudicii dies uenerit, ad percipiendum regnum dicit admitti 





142 REGNUM DEI 


in ecclesiastical traditionn—the sense of the perfected 
Kingdom of the Father in heaven, after the universal 
Judgment. And in the East, the decline of Mon- 
tanism coincided with the rise of that philosophical 
theology which gave Chiliasm its deathblow in the 
Greek Church. 

Montanism has been at times a subject of controversial 
debate, and although the controversial interest directly 
turns upon matters somewhat apart from the present 
enquiry, it may assist our purpose to consider for a 
moment a question upon which diametrically opposite 
opinions have been maintained. Was then Montanism 
essentially a conservative movement, or was it on the 
contrary marked by a spirit of reckless innovation ? 
For the latter alternative, appeal is made above all to 
the “new prophecy ’—xova prophetia—which was its 
most conspicuous feature, and to the claim that as the 
Old Testament represented the dispensation of the 
Father, the New Testament that of the Son, so the 
New Prophecy, an advance upon both, signalised the 
dispensation of the Spirit. On the other hand, and 
with equal a friorz reasonableness, it is urged that 
prophecy was an institution of the Apostolic and of 
the post-Apostolic age, that. the rigorous insistence 


qui fuerint in ecclesia eius operati. Also de Unit. Eccles. xiv.: Ad regnum 
peruenire non poterit qui eam (sc. ecclesiam) guae regnatura est dereliquit. 
Cf., for the general idea of the kingdom, ae of. ef el. viii. ; de Dom. Orat. 
XXIV., XXxvi. 3 ae mortal. xxvi. 

1 The belief in the continuance of prophecy was kept alive till well into 
the second century. The daughters of Philip (Acts xxi. 9) were supposed 
to have ended their days at Hierapolis in Asia, and we hear of a prophet 
Quadratus (apparently not the Apologist) and a prophetess Ammia in the 
same region about the reign of Hadrian (Eus. H. Z. Il. xxxvii., V. xvii.). 
The Didache assumes that genuine prophets still exist, and Irenaeus (supra, 
p- 139, note 1) will not hear of prophecy being banished from the Church, 





PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 143 


upon the note of Holiness in the Church was in 
correspondence with the spirit of St. Paul and of St. 
John, and that the prominence of the perceptible 
guidance of the Holy Spirit is a marked feature of the 
Apostolic Church as we see it in the Acts of the 
Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul. 

The truth appears to be partly on either side. In 
its motive power, Montanism was intensely conserva- 
tive and even reactionary. But the movement had its 
original home in a population little influenced by 
Greek culture, among a rude and impressionable 
mountain people. It had something of the character 
of revivalism; and the tendency of sectarian enthusiasm 
in such a medium is to overleap established rules and 
to set aside standards and precedents, That such a 
movement, reactionary in its first impulse, should 
develop extravagances and innovations, is not without 
probability nor without historical parallels. 

Certainly, then, its Chiliasm was a highly conservative 
feature. As the expectation of Christ’s Coming was 
deferred, it could not but grow fainter in men’s minds. 
“The days are prolonged and every vision faileth” 
was the feeling that irresistibly spread, and as it 
spread men rested more and more upon an organisa- 


The gravamen against the new prophecy was its irrational, ecstatic char- 
acter (on which see below, p. 144, note I). 

1No inference either way can be drawn from the Acts of Bishop 
Achatius or Acacius in the Decian persecution (A.D. 250), in which the 
heathen magistrate says to the confessor, ‘‘Cataphrygas aspice, homdnes 
religionis antiguae, ad mea sacra conuersos,” etc. (Ruinart, Acta Sincera, 
p- 154, ed. 2). The pagan is not appealing to their conservatism as 
Christians (as to which he could know nothing), nor to their return to 
the old gods (which would hardly be likely to move the bishop), but 
to their character for old-fashioned integrity; cf. Cicero, pro Caecin, x., 
exemplar antiguae religionts.” 





144 REGNUM DEI 


tion that would stand the test of indefinite duration. 
But the Montanist could not brook the thought of the 
Church settling down peacefully to a tenancy of the 
present world. “The days are at hand and the effect 
of every vision” was the protest of an _ instinct, 
however narrow and one-sided, yet aboriginally 
Christian. 

Montanism, then, was in certain fundamental respects 
tenaciously conservative. But clearly those elements 
of primitive Christian life and conviction which it most 
jealously conserved were precisely those which were 
becoming most inevitably outworn. Unlike Gnosticism 
and many later heretical tendencies which consisted in 
the fusion of extraneous matter with Christian tradition, 
Montanism was a movement intensely and exclusively 
Christian; but it neglected many elements of the 
original Christian teaching which in the Catholic 
Church balanced the eschatological realism which at 
that time still possessed the Christian mind. 


1The only heathen feature alleged against the Montanists was the 
“ecstasy,” which some of their opponents pointed to as distinguishing 
their prophets from Christian prophets (Eus. v. xvii. 2, etc.). This was 
true in itself (1 Cor. xiv. 32); but the exercise of abnormal gifts of 
utterance in the Church had never in fact been without features of this 
kind, see I Cor. xiv. 14 sq., and St. Paul’s warning, zécd. xii. 2, 3. And 
for the legitimacy of éxcracic fer se the Montanists might have appealed 
to the precedents of among others Adam, Abraham, David, and Daniel 
(see Gen. ii. 21, xv. 12; Ps. cxv. 2; Dan. vii. 28, all in LXX). But as 
the Montanist prophecies were written down and circulated, they can 
hardly have been wholly incoherent. The claim of Montanus really was 
that he was but the passive instrument of divine inspiration; this was 
what Athenagoras held to be characteristic of inspired writers (see Epiph. 
Hfaer. x\viii. 4; Athenag. Aol. ix. of kar’ Exoracw . .. ekepwvnoay, K.T.d.)- 
If Montanus had been, as fourth-century authorities say, a heathen priest, it 
might no doubt go to explain the type of Christian zeal which he developed ; 
the same might with as much, or as little, justice be said of Pachomius 
(supra, p. 136, note 1, and zzfra, p. 163, note 3). 


PRIMITIVE CHURCH AND MILLENNIUM 145 


This is specially true of the Puritan rigorism with 
which the Montanists sought to enforce the ideal of a 
Holy Church. Nothing, certainly, is clearer than that 
our Lord established, and the Apostles sought to build 
up and maintain, a Society whose visible note should 
be that of Holiness, a holiness not satisfied by mere 
adherence to sacred and inviolable doctrine, nor by the 
carrying out in its perfection of a system of rites 
charged with divine efficacy, but consisting above all 
in the character and lives of its members. “The 
temple of GoD is holy, which temple ye are” ; “ In this 
the children of GOD are manifest, and the children of 
the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of 
God, neither he that loveth not his brother”; “My 
little children, these things write I unto you, that ye 
sin not.”! And St. Paul expects the Christian com- 
munity to show their sense of what is due to a holy 
Society by prompt sentence of exclusion against those 
who compromise and threaten its character? But 
the eye of man does not see into the secrets of conduct 
nor into the depths of the heart. And even where 
evil is visibly present, its ruthless extirpation must 
involve the risks of inquisitorial tyranny and of irre- 
mediable harm to the soul of the offender. The 
Lord’s parable of the Wheat and the Tares is part of a 
whole side of his teaching which sets the Church on 
her guard against replacing the inhuman pedantry of 
the Scribes and Pharisees by a new legalism,? equally 
inhuman but more dangerous because more insidious. 


1 1 Cor. iii. 17; 1 John iv. 10, ii. 1. 2 1 Cor. v. I sqq. 
3 This side of Montanism is brought out by Hammack, Dogmengesch. 
vol. i. p. 325 sq. and notes (Ist ed.). 
10 





146 REGNUM DEI 


The problem of the Christian Church, to guard the 
holiness of the body without transgressing the limits 
which are incident to all exercise of spiritual authority 
by frail flesh and blood, is one which calls for infinite 
tact, infinite wisdom and love, for its beneficial solution. 
To say this is to say that the problem has never been 
perfectly solved ; at times the solution has erred on the 
side of severity, more often, especially as the numbers 
of the Church have increased, on that of leniency. And 
recollecting the fallibility of man, even when guided by 
the Spirit of GOD, that surely is the safer side on which ° 
to err. But if so, the visible holiness of the Church 
must suffer the risk of dilution. This is inevitable; 
the only remedy is to beware of lowering the ideal to 
the level of the attainable, and not, by transferring the 
Note of Holiness too entirely to the institutions of the 
Church, to admit the spirit of legalism by one door in 
excluding it at another. 

The difficulty of this complex but vital problem 
has been consistently forgotten by all Puritan move- 
ments in the Church. One and all have been 
inspired by a zeal for GOD, but a zeal not accord- 
ing to full knowledge — od kat’ ériyvwow1 One 
and all have entered with ardour upon the work 
of weeding out the tares, one and all have broken 
the bruised reed and quenched the smoking flax, and 
in rooting out the tares have rooted out the wheat 
also, 

Had Montanism had its way, it would have made 
all Christian progress, all durability of the Church - 
impossible; the Christian body would have been 


1 Rom. x. 2. 


THEOLOGY AND THE MILLENNIUM 147 


narrowed down to a fanatical sect at war with reason 
and civilisation——and with Christian charity. 

The defeat of Montanism was not the annihilation 
of Millenniarism. But it was the result of a campaign 
in which the organisation of the Church joined its ranks 
in the struggle against a separatist movement whose 
inspiration was rooted in the Chiliastic hope. As a 
result the party which most energetically asserted the 
crassly realistic Eschatology was discredited and un- 
churched; and in the East at any rate men were 
henceforth set looking for the Kingdom of Gop 
elsewhere than in the visible reign of Christ over his 
saints on earth. The Second Advent, it was now 
increasingly recognised, was to usher in no such reign 
as Montanus imagined, but the Universal Judgment and 
the reign of the saints with GOD in Heaven. 


And if a reign of Christ on earth was an idea which } 


still demanded satisfaction, was there not the Catholic 
Church in its advancing empire over the lives and 
thoughts of men— going forth conquering and to 
conquer? The identification was obvious, waiting 
only for one to proclaim it. But the moment was not 
yet come.! 


III 


But meanwhile the theological activity of the Greek 
Church was setting in a direction which was inherently 
hostile to the crude realism hitherto unchecked by any 
strong counter-tendency within the Church. To the 
general character of the theological movement of the 


1 See Reuter, Augustinische Studien, p. 106 and reff., and below, Lect. 
V. p. 173 sq. 





148 REGNUM DEI 


second century I have already referred! It is im- 
possible to hold or impart the simplest knowledge on 
any subject, especially in the presence of opposition, 
without some admixture of theory, and this is especially 
true of religion. We find then the earliest theology in 
the form of an interpretation of these elementary facts 
of Christian belief which were taught as the pre- 
requisite of baptism and which formed the basis of 
mutual recognition by Christians of different Churches 
and Provinces—in a word theology grows up as a 
commentary upon the Regula Fidei,? the creed in its 
simplest form. This creed is, before all things, a 
confession of what Christ has done for us. That he 
died for our sins and rose again the third day are the 
two articles of the earliest creed of which we know? 
That is to say, the first steps in theology are deter- 
mined by the way in which men think of the primary 
need of man and the satisfaction of that need by 
Christ. The great divergent theologies of later times, 
orthodox and unorthodox, go back when analysed to 
distinctive appreciations of what Salvation really con- 
sists in. The earliest reflexion upon the Christian 
creed brought out two prominent thoughts. On the 
one hand man’s mortality, and the disease of sin, in 
contrast with the immortality which GOD possessed and 
bestowed through Christ, who as the physician of life 


1 Supra, p. 130. 

2 The expression ‘‘ Rule of Faith” is commonly used nowadays for the 
criterion, or formal authority, which guides us to the true belief (e.g. the 
authority of Scripture, of the Pope, or the Vincentian canon ‘‘ quod ubique,” 
etc.). But the ancient Church invariably uses it of the Creed itself: the 
change is significant of much. 

31 Cor, xv. 3, 43 cf. Rom. iv. 25. 


a 


THEOLOGY AND THE MILLENNIUM 149 


could alone heal our disease, and whose flesh and 
blood were the medicine of immortality. On the other 
hand, man’s need of moral guidance, met by the New 
Law of Christ, who had superseded the ceremonial law 
of the Old Testament, and supplemented its moral 
code by his own higher teaching. The typical repre- 
sentatives of this simple theology are Ignatius and 
Irenaeus; they are fervently Christian, realistic in their 
presentation of doctrine, full of profound reflexion, and 
little coloured by philosophical ideas. It is a theology 
which aims rather at making intelligible, and defending 
against current misstatements, the deposit of teaching 
received from Scripture and tradition, than at correlat- 
ing it with the knowledge derived from nature or with 
the intellectual heritage of the time. The same may 
be said of the one-sided and unorthodox theologies of 
Marcion and of the second century Ebionites. Marcion 
is only to a limited extent to be classed as a Gnostic. 
His theology is rather a caricature of St. Paul. His 
docetism exaggerates St. Paul’s depreciation of a know- 
ledge of Christ after the flesh, and St. Paul’s doctrine 
of the Spiritual Body. His rejection of the Old Testa- 
ment is a one-sided insistence on the absolute new- 
ness of the Christian religion’ The Ebionism of 
the Clementines, on the other hand, is an extreme 
anti-Pauline form of Jewish Christianity, with ele- 
ments of Gnostic origin, but probably borrowed 
through a Jewish channel. But neither Marcion 
nor the party represented by the Clementines were 


1 His doctrine of the ‘‘ Demiurge” or evil creator of the material world, 
formed a substructure of dualism for this antithesis. He probably borrowed 
it from the Gnostic system of Cerdo. 


150 REGNUM DEI 





psychologically possible except as aberrant forms of 
Christian belief. 

The Gnostics proper, both in Syria, Egypt, and the 
West, were on the contrary the product of tendencies 
with which Christianity had nothing to dot The 
Syrian Ophites, whom Hippolytus regards as the 
earliest Gnostics, would appear to have grafted upon 
a stock of serpent-worship an eclectic admixture of 
Biblical elements chosen on the strength of superficial 
coincidences with their essentially Oriental and barbaric 
theosophy. 

The Western Gnostics derived their primary impetus 
from Basilides, whose system, to judge by the conflict- 
ing accounts of it, was a profoundly pantheistic philo- 
sophy of the universe, with elements directly or in- 
directly borrowed from Buddhism.2? Stripped of its 
popular and fantastic dressings, the system appears as 
essentially “ monistic,” the evolution being imagined as 
from below upwards. The system of Valentinus differs 
in greater indebtedness to Greek thought, especially to 
Plato whose “ideas” it disguised in the mythological 
forms of Pleroma and Aeons. It is dualistic in con- 
trast to the system of Basilides, the cosmic process 
being held to consist in an emanation of “Sophia” 
from the highest Being, involving a fall, and a sub- 
sequent return through a process of purification. It 
was the latter systems, especially that of Valentinus in 
its many variations, that lent themselves to some 


degree of semi-Christian syncretism. But throughout, 
1 Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 78. 7 
? On the possibility of this, cf. Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 388 sq.; the 


doctrine of ‘‘the great Ignorance” (Phzlosophum. Vil. i. 27, Cruice) must 
be an echo of Nirvana. 


THEOLOGY AND THE MILLENNIUM 151 


the fusion consists in the taking up, under the theo- 
sophic categories of Gnosticism, of words symbols 
characters and incidents from the Scriptures, often in a 
purely fanciful way, rather than in any attempt to 
allow the native meaning of the Bible to work un- 
hampered upon the soul of the reader. 

Moreover the Gnostics were not mere speculative 
teachers; their schools were religious organisations, 
analogous to the mysteries of ancient Greece.? Prac- 
tically they were from the first rival Churches com- 
mitted to competition with the Christian Churches ; 
their aim was to convince the doubter that with them 
he would find whatever healing for his soul the Chris- 
tian Church had to offer, and in addition satisfaction 
for the deeper intellectual needs which the simple faith 
of the Church wholly failed to satisfy. It is therefore 
only part of the truth to define the Gnostics as “the 
first Christian theologians,” or their position as the 
“acute Hellenisation” of Christian thought? They 
represented a tendency which had never been regarded 
with favour by the representative philosophers of 
Greece, and which was only now beginning to infect 
Greek thought in the lower forms of neo-Platonism, 
Again, it is only by a slight stretch of language that 
the Gnostics can be spoken of as Christian theologians, 


1 Jt must, however, be remembered that Ieracleon, the earliest of com- 
mentators on St. John, was from the school of Valentinian. Nor do the 
extant fragments of his Commentary (Brooke’s ed. in Zexts and Studies, i. 
4, 1891) wholly lack the genuine exegetice! spirit. 

2 On the religious propaganda of the Mysteries, see Jevons, /iztroduction 
to the History of Religion, p. 327 sqq., also Anrich, Das antike Mysterien- 
wesen in s. Einfluss auf das Christentum (1894), pp. 47, 74-105 (relation 
to Gnosticism). 

8 Harnack. 





152 REGNUM DEI 


They attempted, it is true, a cosmic scheme of thought 
which should include the Christian creed, but the 
scheme itself was not Christian, nor properly even 
theistic, and to include the facts of the Christian creed 
in such a scheme was to transform their native char- 
acter. But in their attempts at a comprehensive system 
of religious thought, grotesque and repellent as those 
attempts often were, they were in a sense the pre- 
cursors of the great Alexandrian school; not only 
does Clement habitually use the term “Gnostic” for 
the fully instructed Christian, but the theology which 
appears in its developed form in Origen is an endeavour 
to satisfy, on the basis of the Rule of Faith, the real 
needs which Gnosticism professed to meet, and to 
apply ina rational and purified form whatever genuinely 
philosophical ideas Gnosticism embodied." 

As Christian theologians, however, the Alexandrians 
were the successors of the Apologists. But while the 
Apologists had set out to defend the Christian Society, 
and so incidentally were led to interpret the Christian 
Faith, the Alexandrians began by study and teaching, 
and on the basis of their results, turned to attack and 
defence. Pantaenus was first a teacher, finally a 
missionary.2 Origen’s de Principiis came early in his 
career, his refutation of Celsus seven years before his 
death at the age of sixty-nine. 

To describe at length the influence of Platonic 
thought upon the school of Alexandria, and through 
it upon the Christian Church of all time, is happily 


1 The fundamental difference was that between the esoteric Church of the 
Gnostics, and the esoteric perception of the meaning of the common faith, at 
which Clement and Origen aimed 
’ 2Tn ‘‘ India,” ze. probably Abyssinia. 


THEOLOGY AND THE MILLENNIUM 153 


unnecessary in a Lecturer who can appeal to exposi- 
tions of this subject by predecessors who speak with 
authority far beyond his own.1 I shall be content to 
specify the particular directions in which the Alex- 
andrian theology appears to have affected the con- 
ception of the Kingdom of GoD. 

To begin with, the Christian Religion—except in 
the sense in which belief in GOD as creator and ruler 
of the world, and of man as a responsible but sinful 
being, the subject of divine redemption, involves a 
certain implicit view of existence and life—neither is 
nor contains a philosophy ;” yet on the other hand the 
very limitations under which this fact has been stated 
suffice to show the impossibility of a consistent state- 
ment of all that our faith implies—in other words the 
impossibility of a system of Theology, without regard 
to philosophical questions. This being so, every 
‘great attempt at a comprehensive scheme of Christian 
_ Theology has been necessarily made with the aid of 
a philosophical method and philosophical categories, 
independent of the sources of specifically Christian 
knowledge. The Summa of Thomas Aquinas, the 
characteristic philosophical Theology of the Middle 
Ages, had as its intellectual basis the theology of 
Aristotle. Modern systems have been founded on 
the philosophy of Kant or of Hegel. In the ancient 
Church, with the exception of the Antiochene schools,’ 


1 Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria ; Inge, Christian Mysticism, 
Lect. IIT. 

21 Cor. i. 22, 23, ii. 6 sqq. 

® This includes the (in many respects widely differing) schools of Lucian 
(and the Arians), Apollinarius, and Diodorus (see Harnack, Dzodorus, 
Pp. 233 (7. und U. xxi. 4, 1901). 


154 REGNUM DEI 


whose philosophical apparatus was mainly Aristotelian, 
the great theologies were Platonic. This is true of 
the Eastern Church as a whole; it is equally true of 
the early Western Church, whose first and last great 
creative thinker was preceded, in the appropriation of 
Platonic categories as the philosophical instrument of 
Christian thought, by Victorinus, Hilary, and Ambrose. 

Firstly, then, the practical recognition of this neces- 
sity involves a sympathetic attitude toward the pursuit 
of truth, and a belief that it is never carried out in 
good faith without some degree of Divine aid and bene- 
diction. The Alexandrians were the heirs of those 
Apologists who had proclaimed that either the Chris- 
tians were now the philosophers or the philosophers 
had been Christians... However energetically the 
attacks of hostile philosophers might be repelled, or 
false philosophies combated, there is something in the 
genius of higher theology which can hardly live with 
that indiscriminate scorn for all products of non- 
Christian thought and life? which sustains the longing 
hope for their destruction in a sudden and divinely- 
wrought catastrophe. Moreover, it is impossible to 
carry out any synthesis between philosophy and faith 
without more or less distinguishing, as the result, 
between the primary and the secondary elements of 
Christian conviction. This cannot but be unfavourable 
to crude Realism, in proportion as the synthesis is 
sincere. 

Now, secondly, the philosophy which the Alex- 


1Minuc. Felix, Octav. xx. See also Justin, Ago/. 1. xlvi., Il. viii, 
xiii, But contrast the vehement condemnation of Philosophy and specially 
of Aristotle, in Tertullian, Afo/. xlvi., de test. anim. i,, de Praescr, Vii. 

? See the passages of Tertullian referred to in the previous note. 





THEOLOGY AND THE MILLENNIUM 155 


andrians pressed into the service of Christian thought 
emphasised the contrast between the Real, the Absolute, 
whose sphere was in the region accessible to thought 
alone, and the material and contingent in which sense 
finds contact with a faint and far-off copy of the Real. 
Applied to theology, this tendency may, if unbalanced 
by other and not less truly philosophical tendencies, 
have the effect of disparaging the importance of what is 
conditioned by time and space in comparison with 
eternal and transcendent realities; in other words of 
loosening the grasp of faith upon the historical facts of 
redemption. But even if not pushed thus far, the 
idealism of Plato predisposes men to distrust whatever 
belongs to the sphere of the contingent, and to estimate 
the importance of material facts past, present, or future 
according as they more or less directly embody eternal 
truth. When once theology has become imbued with 
this instinct, eschatological Realism, at any rate in the 
form in which it prevailed in the second century, is 
resented as an earthly intrusion into the sphere of 
things spiritual. 

Thirdly, millennarianism derived and retained its 
hold upon the minds of Christians from the supposed 
plain and literal sense of Scripture. But the Alex- 
andrian school inherited the exegetical tradition of 
Philo, in whom Jewish Faith two centuries earlier had 
joined hands with Platonic philosophy. With his 
philosophy Philo had learned a method of exegesis, 
already applied by men of culture to the Greek 


1 This tendency of the Platonism of Alexandria is emphasised by Dr. 
A. S. Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought (Bampton Lectures for 
1862), p. 62: ‘* religious facts [lost] in metaphysical idea.” But see also 
Inge, Mysticism, pp. 91, 112, etc. 





156 REGNUM DEI 


poets, but which Philo systematised and applied with 
unbridled ingenuity to the interpretation of Scripture 
itself. Weare accordingly prepared to find, and in fact 
do find, allegorisation in the Exegesis of Scripture before 
Origen. But it was Origen who gave it a permanent 
home in the Church as an exegetical method. In no 
respect did the influence of his school cut more directly 
at the roots of Millenniarism than in this. For it 
loosed its sheet-anchor,—naive literalism in the inter- 
pretation of Scripture. And although the principles 
of Origen found a formidable rival in the exegetical 
methods of Antioch, the time had gone by when 
any return to the literal sense of Scripture was likely 
to restore Millenniarism to the credit it had for ever 
lost in the Eastern Church. 

Origen hardly came into direct conflict with it ;? 
but his successor as head of the theological school,’ 
Dionysius, who in 247 became the first really illustrious 
bishop of Alexandria, marks an epoch in the history of 
the question. He refuted the Millenniarism of one of his 
suffragans, Nepos, bishop of Arsinoe, and he criticised 
adversely the internal evidence for the received author- 
ship of the Apocalypse. It could not, he argued, from 
its style and character, be from the pen of the author 
of the Fourth Gospel, and as the latter was not doubtful, 
he concluded that the ascription of the Apocalypse 
to St. John the Evangelist was due to a confusion of 
names. 

1 See Hatch, Azbbert Lectures. 
2In de Prin. 11. xi. he combats grossly materialistic Chiliasm by St. 
Paul’s doctrine of the spiritual body. 


3 a.D. 232. On the friendly controversy with Nepos, see Euseb, H, Z. 
VII, xxiv. 


THEOLOGY AND THE MILLENNIUM 157 


The theology of Origen was hotly attacked, but 
made its way in spite of all opposition. Certain 
elements, necessary perhaps to the completeness of his 
system, but too evidently incompatible with the tradi- 
tional belief of Christians, were generally abandoned. 
But relieved of their unwelcome burden, the theology 
of Origen became the prevalent theology of the East, 
and Basil and Gregory, the founders of the new 
orthodoxy of the outgoing fourth century, circulated a 
manual of Christian doctrine composed of extracts 
from Origen’s writings.2 The name of Origen was the 
battleground of acrimonious debate, and fell into 
increasing disrepute, but through the Cappadocian 
fathers his theology in an expurgated form retained 
its influence upon Greek theological thought. Mean- 
while, by the end of the third century, Millenniarism 
was scarcely treated by Greek theologians as a serious 
subject. The typical representative of the dominant 
theology, both in its learning and in its weakness, is 
Eusebius of Caesarea. The contemptuous way in 
which he refers,2 on the score of his eschatological 
realism, to Papias, is a fair measure of the extent to 
which the millennial hope had now become impossible to 
the average Greek theologian. Commodian, Victorinus, 
and Lactantius,* among the chief Latin Church writers of 


1 Especially the view of the Universe as destined to return to Gop from 
whom it had proceeded, and the view of matter as the negation of the 
Real and Good, The doctrines of universalism, of the pre-existence of 
Souls, and of the eternity of the Universe, were founded upon this 
presupposition. 

2 The Philocalia. 

3 Hist. Eccl, 111. xxxix. 13, opbdpa cpixpdc roy voor. 

4Commod. Justruct. adv. Gent. deos, 43, 44; Lactant. Zzs¢. IV. 12, VI. 
24, Zpit. 71, 72; cf. Victorin. Pet. 2 Afoc. and de Fabrica Mundi. 


158 REGNUM DEI 


this period, show that the West is still largely Chiliastic. 
Apollinarius (c. 370) is an example of the survival of 
Millenniarism in anti-Origenist circles in the Greek 
Churches. His ground was adherence to the literal 
sense of Scripture. But Athanasius, who in some 
respects is free from the theological spell of Origen, 
has no trace of Chiliasm in his writings. To him, the — 
Kingdom of GOD is purely and simply the heavenly 
state to which the saints look forward after the Last 
Judgment.’ 


IV 


One more great factor in the dissolution of Millen- 
niarism remains to be taken account of,—the Christian 
“Empire of Constantine. The events of 311-313, 
beginning with the edict of toleration by the dying 
Emperor Galerius, and ending with the edict of 
Constantine in 313, in which the Emperor practically 
announced his conversion to Christianity, convinced 
the Church that her time of suffering was over, and 
that henceforth the Imperial Power would be the 
protector, not the destroyer, of her Faith. Constantine, 
whatever the extent of his conversion,—however super- 
ficially he may have grasped the meaning of his new 
faith, at any rate recognised the Christian Religion as 
the great Power of the Future, and if only in the interest 
of his Empire, desired that the Church should be one 
and powerful. Under his sons the religious equality 
proclaimed by him was superseded by the establishment 
of the Church as the State Religion. In the fourth 


* 
1 Tt may suffice to quote c, Gent. xlvii. 4, de Zncarn. lvi. 3, and 72 Matt, 
vi. 33 (2. G. xxvii. 1376). 





A CHRISTIAN WORLD 159 


century, the Church further assimilated her organisation 
for purposes of general government! to that of the 
Empire, and the Empire became officially a Christian 
institution. This meant the collapse of another great 
support to Realistic Eschatology. The antithesis of the 
suffering Church and the cruel godless world-power 
was exchanged for the co-operation of a Christian 
Empire with an imperial Church. 

The illusion of the Christian Empire did not last 
very long, but while it lasted—and its remains died 
very slowly—men were necessarily less disposed to long 
for a visible reign of Christ and his saints on earth. 
It might well appear for the time that Christ, in the 
new power and splendour of the Church, was now at 
last reigning on earth, and Satan bound. Eusebius in 
his life of Constantine? describes to us the entrance of 
the Emperor in all his splendid array at the Council of 
Nicea. As the doors were thrown open, and that 
almost superhuman presence passed between the lines 
of awestricken bishops to the imperial chair, a thrill 
passed over the assembly as at the sight of an angel of 
Gop. The modest and almost cast-down demeanour 
of the Sovereign subtly enhanced the effect. The 
scene is typical of the momentary illusion of the 
Churches. All difficulties were referred to the Emperor 
for solution, and it was his statesmanlike instinct that 
conceived the Council of Nicea, as but a few years 
before he had by a like expedient on a somewhat lesser 
scale, appeased what threatened to be an equal danger 


1 | refer to the groupings of episcopal dioceses into provinces, exarchies, 
» and patriarchates corresponding to the administrative divisions of the 
Empire. On the extent of this see Sohm, Atrchenrecht, pp. 350-377. 
21th, =. 





160 REGNUM DEI 


to the Churches of the West. But already, at that first 
imperial intervention in Christian questions, an under- 
current of misgiving was felt. Quzd imperatori cum 
ecclesia? was not the utterance of the Catholic and 
victorious majority, but it gave expression to a feeling 
which had to be reckoned with in the future.t 

And indeed the Empire soon began to show its 
untrustworthiness. Constantine, as long as he lived, 
would endure no departing from the decision of his 
great council, but practically he did much to undermine 
its authority. His sons were not of one mind, and 
Constantius, who survived to reign over the undivided 
Empire, was a patron of the Arian cause and perse- 
cuted the Catholic bishops. It did not, then, follow 
that the Emperor, if Christian, would be a Catholic. 
And there was no certainty that he would be a 
Christian at all. The illusion of the Christian Empire 
was but poorly sustained by Constantine himself, it 
was discredited by Constantius, and destroyed by 
Julian. We stand here at the parting of the ways. 
The revival of an actively Christian Empire under 
Theodosius was the beginning of a new development 
in the Greek Church, which more and more settled 
down from the end of the fourth century in the direc- 
tion of Byzantine “erastianism.” The West, on the 
contrary, never wholly went back to the illusion of the 
Christian Empire as an embodiment of the kingdom 
of Christ. From the middle of the fourth century the 
outlines of a rival and grander ideal begin to gather 
shape and substance. The papal ideal was very 


1] may be permitted to refer here to the Prolegomena to Athanasius 
(Nicene and post-Nicene Library, 1892), pp. xvii, xlii (cf. Ixxvi). 


a 


A CHRISTIAN WORLD 161 


many centuries in reaching maturity, but its roots are 
in the first tentative steps toward centralised ecclesi- 
astical rule which date from the year 343.1 

In the Western Church, then, the drift of events 
was setting strongly in the direction of an ecclesiastical, 
as distinct from an eschatological interpretation of the 
idea of the Kingdom of Gop. The tendency was 
practical rather than explicit in thought. In fact it 
was in the West that the Millennial interpretation, 
which had died down in the Greek Church, still held 
its ground till the end of the fourth century? 

But the general tendency to its abandonment by the 
Church is unmistakable; and the Christian instinct, 
however ardent the faith and hope which looks in 
patience for the perfect Kingdom of GOD in the world 
to come, will not forego some ideal which enlists the 
enthusiasm of effort for the realisation of Gop’s 
Kingdom on earth as the highest object of personal 
aspiration. In the West, where Christian religion was 
already most practical and energetic, and where it was 
destined to receive the whole-hearted allegiance of 
races more gifted and virile than any whose life it had 


1 The reasons for regarding the Sardican canons as marking an epoch 
have been stated in a short essay on Roman Claims to Supremacy 
(S.P.C.K. 1896, for Church Historical Society), part iv. (and part iii, 
on the claims of Julius I.). 

2 We trace it in Pelagius (c. 410), who held that unbaptised infants, 
though not deprived of eternal life, were excluded from the Kingdom, and 
more strongly in Tyconius the Donatist (c. 370, Xeg. v. in Burkitt’s ed., 
T. and S. iii. 1, 1894, pp. 56, 61). But in Primasius (c. 540), who used 
Tyconius’ commentary on the Apocalypse, it has disappeared, doubtless 
under the influence of Augustine. Possibly this process had begun in 
Tyconius himself ; for his commentary, as 7¢ reached Gennadius (de vir. ill, 
XVili. ¢. A.D. 495), shows strong traces of the new view stated by Augustine 
(see below, Lect. V. p. 171 sqq.). 


II 





162 REGNUM DEI 


up till now controlled, the immediate future was assured 
to the ecclesiastical ideal of the Kingdom of GoD in 
the form of an omnipotent Church. 

A movement was already in full progress which at 
first made in a contrary direction, but which very soon 
lent to the new direction of men’s hopes and efforts 
an indispensable element of organisation and leader- 
ship. 

When the wonderful development of the monastic 
life in the Egyptian deserts had begun to be the talk 
of Christendom, a Gallican Churchman, John Cassian, 
visited the fathers of the wilderness in order to see for 
himself what this thing might be. In reply to one of 
his first enquiries, as to what had led these men out 
into the desert, he received the answer: “We have 
come to seek the Kingdom of Gop.”! The answer is 
significant of much. The earlier hermits had fled from 
a cruel world, from the persecutions of the heathen, 
from the responsibilities of worldly possessions, from 
the temptations of social life; they went to seek GoD 
in solitude, their search was for the Kingdom of GoD 
within them. The movement toward the hermit life 
was not merely a condemnation of ordinary human 
society, but of life in the ordinary brotherhood of 
Christians, as no fit sphere for the earthly reign of 
Christ. Isolated from the common offices of the 
Church, and sharing but rarely either in common 
Christian teaching or in the ordinary means of grace, 
the first and obvious tendency of the povdfovres was 
towards an individualistic conception of the Kingdom 


1 Cassian, Co//at. 1. iii., iv. But in 11. vi. the kingdom of heaven is taken 
by Abbot Chaeremon simply of Reward in the Life to come, 


A CHRISTIAN WORLD 163 


of GoD diametrically opposite to that toward which 
Western Christendom was moving. But the hermit 
movement soon diminished in importance beside the 
growth of monastic societies; and even an Antony, 
separate as his life was from the visible organised 
Church, was united to that Church by the strongest 
ties of veneration on the one side, and of spiritual 
sympathy on the other! And the influence of later 
solitaries shows that their aloofness from ordinary 
Church life was compensated by immense power on 
the exceptional occasions when they deigned to inter- 
vene in its affairs.2 On the whole then, the hermits as 
a factor in the history of our question, merge in the 
broader and stronger current of organised Monachism. 

The beginning of monastic societies appears to have 
been nearly as early as that of solitary Monasticism, and 
to have sprung from a parallel and independent source. 

Pachomius founded societies of monks in Upper 
Egypt as early as the time of Constantine,—upon what 
model, if any,® it is not easy to say for certain. The 
foundation of such a society was inspired in part by 
the same ideal as that of Antony or of Cassian’s in- 


1See Preface to Life of Antony in Athanasius (Nicene Library), 
pp. 190-193; cf. also p. 503, X. 

2 #.e. Symeon the Stylite’s correspondence with the emperor, Euagr. 
Hist. 1. x.; cf. 1. xiii. (p. 266), v. xxi. fin. (the younger Symeon), vi. 
xxiii.; Aphraates in Thdt. 4%. Z. Iv. xxiii. 

3 It has been held that Pachomius had been a monk of Serapis, and that 
he modelled his new institute upon the Serapeum. If the former fact were 
certain (and the evidence for it appears somewhat slender), the latter 
would not follow of necessity. See Athanasius (ut supra), p. 193, sub 
fin., and works referred to zéz¢. p. 188; Kriiger in 7h. Literaturzeitung, 
1896, p. 620; Griitzmacher, Pachomius, etc. (1896) ; Ladeuze, tude sur 
le Cénobitisme Pakhomien, p. 157sq. (Louvain, 1898. Strongly against 
any connexion of P, with Serapeum). 





164 REGNUM DEI 


‘formant, the ideal of the perfect life, of the Kingdom 
of GoD within. But it added to the inspiration of 
Antony the perception that the perfect life is hardly to 
be obtained in solitude. It was a great and feal 
advance to substitute for the dream of solitary per- 
fection that of a perfect society. The vision of a 
perfect society to be realised on earth is fertile of 
noble effort, and it has had a long and varied history. 
If our Lord’s teaching is borne in mind, we shall not 
dare to count upon its actual realisation here below, 
but none the less our effort, if true to his inspiration, 
will never swerve from that direction. And Monasticism 
has this further true spiritual perception, that the ideal 
of perfection towards which Christ directed our aim is 
perfection of character rather than mere institutional 
completeness of organisation.! It may be that, equally 
with the hermits, the monastic communities made a 
mistake in their despair of the holiness of the visible 
Church, in seeking a holy Society not in the Church as 
such, but in a special enclosure within it. That mis- 
take was at any rate natural in an age when the world, 
hitherto contentedly heathen, was transferring itself in 
mass to the Church, where it went on contentedly 
Christian. Be that as it may, the double standard 2 of 
Christian life—one for the monk, another for the laity, 
with the clergy hovering between the two, some on one 

1 Cassian’s Col/ations, and, I would add, the Sermon in the Life of 
Antony, are witnesses to the strong moral aim which, however mingled 
with heterogeneous elements, penetrated early Egyptian Monachism. 

2 See the letter of Pope Siricius, A.D. 385, to Himerius. He enforces 
clerical celibacy on the ground that ‘‘they who are in the flesh cannot 
please God” (Rom. viii. 8; compare with the context in Romans the two 


ominous assumptions (1) that the married life is ‘‘in the flesh,” (2) that to 
“*please God” is a distinctively clerical obligation), 


A CHRISTIAN WORLD 165 


side some on the other, became established just at a 
time when the general level of Christian morality was 
becoming imperilled! by the rapid absorption of the 
degenerate population of the Greco-Roman world. 
Moreover the monks, who by the action of Cassian, 
of Augustine, and of many others rapidly became 
acclimatised as an institution of the Western Church, 
proved a much-needed reinforcement to the zeal of the 
Latin West in dealing with the Teutonic races that 
soon were to become its masters. The monks of the 
West were by their numbers, their organisation, their 
devotion, to play a primary part, first in preserving the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy from total secularisation and 
discredit in the storms of the dark ages, and then, 
when order began to emerge from confusion and learn- 
ing from utter barbarism, in enabling the popes of the 
eleventh century to turn into reality the ideal—dimly 
perceived by the greatest thinker of early Latin 
Christendom—of the Kingdom of GOD upon earth in 
the form of an all-powerful Church. 


1 This comes out, for example, in Augustine’s letters to Count Bonifatius. 
Practically the alternative toa lax morality is the monastic state. Marriage 
is treated as a step in the former direction (4, 220. 4. See also the article 
on Augustine referred to in the next Lecture, § 15). 


EEC TURE ¥ 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN ST. AUGUSTINE 


167 











This is Christianity, a spiritual Society, not because it has no worldly 
Concerns, but because all its Members, as such, are born of the Spirit, 
kept alive, animated, and governed by the Spirit of Gop. It is constantly 
called by our Lorp the Kingdom of Gop, because all its A/mzstry and — 
Service, all that is done in it, is done in Obedience and Subjection to is 
Spirit, by which Angels live and are governed in Heaven. The Kingdom 
of Curist, is the Spirit, and Power of Gop, dwelling and manifesting — 
itself in the Birth of a new inward Man ; and no one is a member of this 
Kingdom, but so fav as a true Birth of the Spirit is brought forth in him. 
W. Law. 














And then at last our bliss 

Full and Perfect is,— 

But now begins; for from this happy day 
The old Dragon under ground 

In straiter limits bound, = x 
Not half so far casts his usurped sway, 
And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail 
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail. 











LEC fer e Vv 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN ST. AUGUSTINE 


We know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which 
is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.—1 Cor. 
xiii. 9. j 


OF the three alternative conceptions of the Kingdom 
of GOD distinguished in the previous Lecture, the 
primary and ultimate one has dominated the thought 
and the prayers of the Church at all times without 
distinction. The other two have prevailed side by 
side with it, and in acknowledged subordination to it; 
but to an unequal extent, and for unequal lengths of 
time. The history of the conception of the Kingdom 
of GOD relates mainly to these more variable elements. 
Its history in the early Church is the history of the 
prevalence and decline of Millenniarism. It ends with 
St. Augustine. The history of the medieval idea of 
the Kingdom of GoD and ofits more modern inter- 
pretations is, mainly, the history of the theology 
and constitution of the Church. It begins with St. 
Augustine. 

Augustine, as a Western Churchman, inherited a 
refined and spiritualised Millenniarism, which later 


reflexion led him deliberately to abandon. Preaching 
1 Supra, p. 119. 
169 


170 REGNUM DEI 


on a certain first Sunday after Easter, he dwells on 
the significance of the “Octave” of the feast. The 
eighth day, he says, symbolises the final rest of the 
saints in heaven, whereas the Sabbath, or seventh 
day, corresponds to the coming millennial rest of the 
saints on earth. “The Lord will reign on earth, as 
the ‘Schiptures say. 2.1.7 
Creation to the first coming of Christ, five s//ennia 
or week-days of history. “ Ab adventu Domini sextus 
agitur,—in sexto die sumus.” ? 

But reflexion on the events of his time, and the 
pressure of controversy, especially with the Donatists 
and the Pelagians, led him, as he tells us, to a change 
of mind. Writing about 420,> he distinguishes the 
“first resurrection” from the second, as the resurrection 
of the soul, under grace, from the resurrection of the 
body at the Universal Judgment. 

“Of these two resurrections,” he continues, “ John 
the evangelist, in the book called Apocalypse, has 
spoken in such a way that the first resurrection has 
been misunderstood by some of our people and turned 
into certain ridiculous fables. . . . Those who, on the 
strength of the above words, have surmised that the 
first resurrection would be a corporal one, have, among 
other’ reasons, been mainly moved by the number—a 
thousand years—as though there were destined to be a 
Sabbath rest of that duration for the saints, a holy 
vacation after six thousand years of labour, ... as it is 
written ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 


1 Serm. 259. The date of this sermon is unknown, but it is evidently 
prior to Augwstine’s change of mind (z7/ra, p. 171). 

2 On this sclaeme see above, pp. 125, 126, note I, 129. 

3 de Civ, Dei, XX. Vii. 


There have been, from the ~ 






we a 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND MILLENNIUM 171 


and a thousand years as one day’! .. . and that the 
saints are to rise again to keep this Sabbath. Which 
opinion would be at least tolerable, if it were understood 
that the saints would enjoy certain spiritual delights 
from the presence of the Lord. For we ourselves were 
Sormerly of this opinion. But when they say that those 
who then rise again will spend their time in immoderate 
carnal feastings—in which the quantity of food and drink 
exceeds the bounds not only of all moderation but of all 
credibility,,—such things cannot possibly be believed 
except by carnal persons.” Accordingly, he now ex- 
plains the first resurrection as the resurrection of souls 
from the death of sin to faith in Christ, the binding of 
-Satan as the limitation of his power to the hearts of the 
wicked, and the thousand years as the interval between 
the first and second Advent. During this period the true 
saints, even on earth, reign with Christ :'— 

“ Excepting, of course, that kingdom, of which he will 
say at the last: Come ye blessed of my Father, possess 
the kingdom prepared for you,—unless in some manner, 
of course far inferior, his saints, of whom he says: 
‘Behold I am with you even to the consummation of 
the world,’ were even now reigning with him, certainly 
the Church would not be spoken of, * even now, as the 


1 See above, p. 125, note I. 2 See above, p. 127 sq. 

3de Civ. Dei, xx. ix. For the details of Augustine’s exegesis here, 
see Reuter, p. 114 sqq. 

* Ze. by our Lord in the sayings and Parables to which he proceeds to 
refer. Augustine is arguing for an interpretation of the Gospels, not 
appealing to language current in his day. This is overlooked by Reuter, 
August. Studien, p. 111 and elsewhere. In this Lecture my obligations to 
Reuter’s most accurate and impartial investigations will be apparent to 
every student. I cannot overstate them ; but I have never followed even 
Reuter blindly or without verification. 


172 REGNUM DEI 


kingdom of Christ, or kingdom of Heaven. For of 
course it is zz the present that the scribe, of whom 
we spoke above, is instructed in! the kingdom of 
Heaven ... and it is from out of the Church that 
those reapers are to collect the tares . . . ‘the Son of 
man shall send his angels and they shall gather out of 
his kingdom all things that offend’” He goes on to 
draw the same inference from the passage “ whosoever 
shall break one of the least of these commandments 
and shall teach men so, the same shall be called least 
in the kingdom of heaven,’—as contrasted with the 
warning that “except your righteousness exceed the 
righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall in 
no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” He 
continues “accordingly the kingdom of heaven is to be 
taken in two senses. In one sense it contains both,— 
him who breaks and him who keeps,—but the one 
least, the other great. In the other sense there is the 
kingdom of heaven into which only he enters who 


keeps the commandment. The kingdom which con- 


tains both is the Church as it now is. The other is 
the Church as it shall be, since there will be no evil 
person there. Accordingly even now the Church is 
the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven. 
That is to say even now his saints reign with him, not 
indeed in the same way as they will reign then. Nor 
yet do the tares reign with him, although in the 
Church they are growing with the wheat. . . . Lastly, 
they reign with him, who are zz his kingdom in the 
sense that they ave his kingdom. For how are they 


1 But the Greek is eis not év (T.R.), or the virtually equivalent dative, 
without év. On the passage see above, Lect. III. p. 81. 








ST. AUGUSTINE AND MILLENNIUM 173 


the kingdom of Christ who, to say nothing of other 
points, although they are there until all things that 
offend are gathered out of his kingdom until the end 
of the world, yet, while there, seek their own, and not 
the things of Jesus Christ?” Augustine, then, has 
abandoned Millenniarism even in its most refined form, 
and has adopted in its place, on the basis of the 
biblical distinction between the reign of Christ now 
and the reign of GoD hereafter, an identification of 
the kingdom of Christ with the Church as it now is. 

It is very commonly said! that Augustine identified 
the visible Church with the Kingdom of GoD, and that 
he was the first to identify the two. The two state- 
ments are both correct only under certain limitations. . 

As to the latter point, it will have appeared from what 
has been said in former Lectures? that the identification 
of the Church with the kingdom of Christ was no 
invention of Augustine. It was prepared for by the 
whole course of Christian thought on the subject, and 
the decline of Millenniarism simply removed an 
obstacle from a development which was certain to come 
about. The close relation of the Church to the 
kingdom of Christ, which we found both in our Lord’s 
teaching and in that of St. Paul, must above all be 
borne in mind here. But the fact that neither our 
Lord, nor St. Paul, nor any early Christian writer 


1 B.g. Hort, Christian Ecclesia, p. 19; Ritschl, Unterricht, § 11, note: 
** Am meisten falsch ist, sie wegen einer bestimmten rechtlichen Verfassung 
als das Reich Gottes zu bezeichnen, was die rémisch-katholische Kirche 
sett Augustin fix sich in Anspruch nimmt.” The italicsare mine. This 
is apparently what is spoken of (e.g. by Hatch, Bampton Lectures, Preface 
to ed. 2) as the “‘ Augustinian idea” of the Church. 

2 See Lect. II. pp. 55 sq. and 75 sq. ; and Lect. IV. pp. 147, 161. 


174 REGNUM DEI 





before Augustine! is known to have stated in so many 
words the identification between the two, is important, 
both in itself, and as bearing upon the question of 
St. Augustine’s influence. Assuming, as we must 
. assume, that the eschatology of Justin Martyr, Papias, 
Irenaeus, and even of Augustine himself in his earlier 
days as a Christian, was the inevitable, but mistaken 
and transitory, outcome of a realism natural to simple 
faith in the absence of corrective experience, and that 
its disappearance left unsatisfied a genuine Christian 
instinct, the demand for a tangible interpretation of 
the Kingdom of GOD as an object of present effort and 
as a now living fact,—it was a problem imposed upon 
serious Christian thought to bring the conception of 
the Church into relation with that of the Kingdom of 
Gop. It only surprises us that the formal attempt to 
do so was so long delayed. But the activity of Chris- 
tian thought had been, by the tendency of speculation 
and by the presence of controversies, so far directed to 
the objective and transcendent, to the relation of GOD 
and the Universe, of the historical Christ to the eternal 
Father, the relation of the Unity of GoD to the Trinity 
of Persons, 

Belief in the Catholic Church was, it is true, among 
the articles early incorporated in the baptismal creed ;? 
this was necessary in order to guard the catechumens 


1‘‘Erst er ist—wie man vermuten darf—der Producent der Formel 
geworden,” Reuter, p. 110. An ingenious Roman correspondent of 
Augustine’s friend Casulanus, about A.D. 397, furnishes the only exception 
I can recall (Z/. 36. 17). 

2 See Swete, Apostles Creed, p. 73 s8qq. It is interesting to note that 
among the Valentinian ‘‘Aeons” Zcc/esia occupied a prominent place 
(Hipp. PAz/os. VI.). 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND MILLENNIUM 175 


against the pretensions of rival bodies. But in the 
East, the questions in controversy had been discussed 
upon their merits; authority was invoked, but it was 
the authority of Scripture, and of the Apostles as 
exhibited in the Rule of Faith.t 

The schismatic movements, however, had early 
begun to concentrate interest upon the Church and 
its distinguishing marks—its “notes.” But at first 
the process was_ practical and implicit, not formally 
theoretical. Montanism even more than Gnosticism 
suarpened the Catholic self-consciousness of the Church 
in contrast to particularist movements. But even in 
Cyprian, who felt the pressure of the still more formid- 
able Novatian schism, there is still no identification of 
the Church with that Kingdom of GoD for which it is 
the preparation. “He cannot,’ so Cyprian writes,? 
“hope to reach the kingdom, who deserts her (the 
Church) who zs destined to reign.” 

The relation between the two is close and defined ; 
but it is one of preparation, not of identity. Cyprian’s 
thought is substantially, as we shall see, identical with 
that of Augustine himself. The difference is simply 
that Augustine, on the basis of a systematic exegesis of 
the New Testament, subordinates to Cyprian’s simple 
eschatological conception of the kingdom a historical 
reference, and places the resulting conception in relation 
with a wide and deep doctrinal context and with a 
far-reaching religious philosophy of history. 

It was schism, then, rather than heresy, that first 

1 On this sufra, p. 148, note 2. On the general principle see August. 


c. Maximianum, MU. xiv. 3; cf. also Athanasius (wf supra), pp. Ixxiv, Ixxv. 
2 See above, Lect. IV. p. 141, note 2. 


176 REGNUM DEI 


presented to the mind of Churchmen the issues that 
are involved in the analysis of the idea of the Church, 
and it was mainly in Africa, the province of Augustine, 
that the first formal answer was given by Christian 
theology-to the challenge of pure and simple schism, 
disengaged from any doctrinal issues. Cyprian, and a 
century later Optatus, deal with this question; they 
enforce the principles of unity and of catholic com- 
munion against separatist pretensionc, 2nd Cyprian in 
particular dwells upon the authority of the collective 
Episcopate. But their interest is practical, not theo- 
logical; they have not gone back to the essential 
conception, not laid the foundations of a systematised 
theology of the Church. : 

This was reserved for Augustine. Although there- 
fore we cannot say, in the face of the strong drift of 
converging tendencies of thought, and of the notorious 
risks? of an argument from silence, that no one before 


Augustine, in writing or in speech, spoke of the ~ 


Catholic Church as the Kingdom of GoD, the fact 
remains that extant literature records no instance of 
such language, and this fact becomes intelligible when 
we notice that Augustine grounds the identification 
upon a revision of received exegesis, and that it is with 
him part of a new theological analysis—the analysis of 
the conception of the Church. 

But the question which is really more important and 
difficult than that of the pre-Augustinian use of the 
words is that of Augustine’s own thought on the sub- 


1 As to Cyprian, see the excellent passages in Reuter, p. 233, and 
Benson, Cyprian, p. 530. 
* Reuter, p. 109. 






ST. AUGUSTINE AND MILLENNIUM 177 


ject, and of his influence upon Christian posterity, 
That he identified the Kingdom of Gop with the 
Catholic Church is a commonplace of popular theo- 
logy ; (and it is commonly assumed as a matter of +: 
course that this identification involved the conception 
of the Kingdom of GoD as identifiable with the hier- 
archically organised body, whose authority, canons, 
and discipline are all thereby conceived of as the 
authority, the laws, and the administration of a 
kingdom, differing from earthly kingdoms in this re- 
spect, that while they and their laws are human, this 
kingdom is divine, and its laws divine laws. ] Possibly 
it was this conception of the Kingdom of GoD 
to which, in the circumstances of the immediately 
succeeding centuries, Augustine’s influence supplied the 
intellectual stimulus. But the way in which, in 
the passage quoted above, Augustine elaborates his 
identification, suggests at least a doubt whether his 
real meaning was that just suggested. It is true 
that, in working out the details of exegesis of the 
Apocalypse, when he comes upon the words “I saw 
thrones (sedes), and they sate upon thenf, and 
judgment was given unto them,” he interprets them of 
“what, during those thousand years, the Church is 
doing, or what is done in her... . This is not to 
be taken of the last judgment, but we must understand 
it of the thrones of the officers (fraepositi) or of the 
officers themselves by whom the Church is governed . . . 
[and the ‘judgment’ probably of the power of binding 
and loosing, cf. 1 Cor. v. 12].” But he says nothing 
to specially connect these sedes with the thought of 


1 See p. 173, note I, supra. 
12 


= 


178 REGNUM DEI 





reigning. On the contrary, the reference to the “ sedes ” 
comes in, in passing, as a detail of minor exegesis, 
whereas in the entire context before and after, the 


Reign of Christ is referred not to any rank or office in 


ie ‘the Church, but to truth of Christian character. {The 


Church is now the kingdom of heaven and kingdom of 
Christ, because Christ is reigning in his true saints, and 
because they are in a real, though not in the perfect 
sense, reigning with him. The unworthy members of 
the Church, the tares, are not reigning in any sense, they 
are 7 the kingdom “ donec colligantur,” but not of it} 
Clearly then the “7zezgn” with Christ, in so far as it is 
a present fact, is what constitutes the existing Church 
the kingdomof.Christ, and this reign with Christ is” 
the lot of all true Christians, whether praepositz or not ; 
and if pr “aePositi belong to the tares, as they may, they 
are not “eo modo in regno eius ut sint etiam ipsi 
regnum eius.” It is important to enquire, then, whether 
the interpretation which pervades St. Augustine’s 
exegesis of the millennial passage in the Apocalypse, 
or that which refers the Church’s character as “ regnum 
Christi” to her government by jpraepositi, to the 
exercise in her of organised authority, on the whole 
represents the mind of Augustine. Is the Church 


“identified by him with the Kingdom of Gop because 
‘in her the saints reign with Christ, or because she is 
\, hierarchically governed ? 


To begin with, we must notice that even in the act 
of superseding the crude eschatological interpretation 
of the Reign of Christ in favour of what we may 
provisionally call the ecclesiastical conception of it, he 

1 See Reuter, pp. III sqq., especially 118-120, 





15-5 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND MILLENNIUM 179 


makes a large reserve in favour of the primary and 
ultimate sense, the sense alone known, as we have 
seen, to Cyprian. The contrast which Cyprian draws 
between the Church as present and the Kingdom of 
GoD as future is maintained by Augustine, and colours 
his language in an important class of passages, in 
which the Kingdom of GOD is spoken of as future 
simply. It is hardly necessary to quote examples.* 
Secondly, the contrast marked, in his comment on 
the Apocalypse as quoted above, between the “ ecclesia 
qualis nunc est” and the “ecclesia qualis tunc erit” is 
characteristic of a class of passages, of which the follow- 
ing from the Re¢ractations may serve as a sample :7— 


“Wherever in these books I have mentioned the tee 


Church as not having spot or wrinkle, it is not to be! 


taken as now existing, but of the Church whose 
existence is being prepared.” Again, to anticipate a 
subject to be discussed below, he distinguishes, in a 
third class of passages, between the cizvitas Dez on 
earth, and on the one hand the czvitas superna, its 
counterpart now in heaven, on the other hand the 
completed czvitas in the eternity to come® In a 


bet 


fourth class of passages* he more or less definitely . 


1 See quotations already made, and, for example, a s. Virginitate, vi. 6, 
** ecclesia uero in sanctis regnum caelorum fossessurts.” Also the number- 
less passages in which the ‘“‘ Regnum” is equated with ‘‘ Vita aeterna.” 
The classification is Reuter’s. 

2 Retract, 1. xviii.; cf. de Civ. Dei, XX. ix.; Sermt. 259. 2, 3, etc. 

3 de Civ. Dez, 11. xxix. : Supernaciuitas . . . ubi uita aeternitas. XV. ii.: 
Umbra sane quaedam ciuitatis huius. . . . seruiuit intermis.... Serm. 
214. II: sanctam quoque ecclesiam matrem uestram /amguam supernam 
Ierusalem sanctam ciuitatem Dei honorate. Serm. 223. 9; Enchirid. 
xix., Xx. 

*de Civ. Dei, XX. xix.; de pecc. mer. et remiss. U1. i, 1, MI, xii, 213 
¢. duas Epp. Pel. 1. xxi. 40; Sermt. 71. ii. 4, and elsewhere. 





180 REGNUM DEI 


and directly identifies the Church on earth with the 
Kingdom of Gop. The difficulty of reducing all 

x | passages of these four classes to a _ single con- 
|sistent sense is in part due to the alternation in his 
‘mind of two conceptions of the Church itself, to be re- 
‘ferred to hereafter, which Augustine never completely 
synthesised. But the general sense is sufficiently 
clear from the following passage : 1— 

“What resource have they left, but to assert that 
the kingdom of heaven itself belongs to the present 
life in which we now are? For why should not their 

; blind presumption proceed to this madness also? And 

\what could be more senseless than such an assertion? 

: “For although even the Church now existing is some- 

‘times called the Kingdom of the heavens, it is of 

‘\course so called because it is being gathered for the 

future and eternal life.’ In other words the Church 

as it now is may be called the Kingdom of GOD, in so 

far as it consists of those of whom the true Kingdom of 
+Gop is being made up. 

So far, then, the thought of Augustine seems clear 
and consistent. His conception of the Kingdom of 

- GOD as existing now on earth is determined by, and 
subordinated to, his conception of that Kingdom inits | 
perfection hereafter. The same applies to his con- 
ception of the Church. The Church “ qualis tunc erit ” 
is primary, and the real nature of the Church in her 
present imperfection is to be understood by reference 
to it. Moreover the Church “qualis tunc erit” is 
identified by him with the Kingdom of GOD in its 
perfection, which shall include all good and exclude all 

1 de Virgintt. xxiv. 2 Cf. 2 Joann. Tr. \xviii. 3. 


ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM 181 


evil. The Church and the Kingdom are there perfect, 
and the identification is correspondingly perfect. But 
it would naturally follow that there should be a corre- 
sponding but imperfect identification—“alio aliquo 
modo longe quidem impari” —between the Kingdom 
of Christ in its imperfection and the Church “ut nunc 
est in terra.” So far we have included, in a simple 
statement, with one exception (namely, the relation 
between the czvzfas Dez on earth and the now existing 
civitas superna), the gist of the four classes into which 
Augustine’s language on the Church and the Kingdom 
of GOD may be disposed, and it remains to enquire 
whether the indeterminate relation—“ aliquo modo ”— 
between the Kingdom of GOD and the Church of 
Christ on earth is more clearly brought out by 
Augustine elsewhere. 


II 


But this enquiry involves a more comprehensive 
survey of St. Augustine’s religious and intellectual 
development, and of his outlook upon the theslogical ~~~ : 
and historical problems of his time. 

To gather up into a single and at the same time 
just impression the many sides of a many-sided thinker < 
is never an easy task. When the special distinction of| 
that thinker is religious genius the task is doubly , 
difficult. And in no instance is it less easy than in 
the case of Augustine, the most commanding religious 
personality of the ancient Church,—perhaps of the 
Church in any age. To the subtle philosophical per- 
ception of an Origen,? he added a concentration of . 


1 de Civ, Det, XX. ix. ? See Reuter, p. 101. 


182 REGNUM DEI 


interest upon the realities of life and a sense of the 
immanent reason of historical development which kept 
him in heartfelt sympathy with the practical life of the 
Church, and assured Churchmen that whether or not 
they understood him, he understood them, and was at 
one with them. If he lacked the naive picturesqueness 
and practical power of a Francis of Assisi, he added to 
all his love of GoD and of Gop’s creatures a command 
of thought to which Francis made no claim, and an 
intellectual influence which is hard to measure. If he 
falls below Luther in the freshness and reality of his 
grasp of some vital elements of New Testament re- 
ligion, is he not incomparably above him in humility 
and refined self-discipline, in versatile intellectual 
sympathy, and in the universality of his appeal to the 
spiritual nature of man? 

If it is impossible, without unduly emphasising or 
suppressing here and there, to state Augustine’s con- 
victions in strictly harmonious coherence, it is perhaps 
because he perceived, as none had perceived before 
him, consequences of axiomatic truths which inevitably 
,lead the finite mind of man into insoluble oppositions 
4—oppositions synthesised in his case in the harmony 
of a rich personality, but destined to reveal their an- 
tagonism under intellectual analysis, or when in the 


| course of history men have endeavoured to act them 


out. 
(@ Augustine, then, is before all things an intensely 
experimental Theist. The thirst for the living GoD 


\ 14Cf. Ep. 214. §6; de dono Perseu. xvi.: ‘‘Sed alia est ratio uerum 


\ . . . . . 
. )tacendi, alia uerum dicendi necessitas . . . quantum tamen est et haec 


|[causa tacendi] una, ne peiores faciamus eos qui non intelligunt, dum 
uolumus eos qui intelligunt facere doctiores.” 






ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM 183 


runs through all the restless tossings of his soul in 
earlier life, and his Christian experience is that of one 
who has drunk deep and is satisfied, but yet thirsts 
again.| Bonum est mihi adhaerere Deo. He cleaves 
to God not merely with heart and will but with the 
reasoned conviction of the intellect as well. Many, 
before and since, have reached a philosophic idealism 
as absolute as that of Augustine; but never, surely, 
was philosophical idealism ? more completely absorbed - 
into living religious experience than it was by him. 
That absolute reality belongs to GOD alone, that the 
reality of things in time and space, of the whole order 
and course of this world, is derivative and in a sense 
illusory, that the Phenomenal is but a faint reflexion 
of the Real and incapable of altering the unchanging 
Reality which centres in GOD himself, that in finding 
GoD the soul finds her only stable foundation in Reality, 
—all this was to Augustine not merely a philosophical 
creed, but the persistent foundation of his personal 
religion and of much of his theological thought as 
well. As applied to history, it leads Augustine to 
the thought that all religions are but more or less 
imperfect expressions of one essential religion,? now 
known to us as the Christian religion, by which the 
members of the czvztas superna have ever been guided 
to their divine home by the Christ whose presence has 
never been wanting in the world. As applied to the 
Church, it tempers his strong insistence on the preroga- 

1 Conf. X. xxvii. : ‘‘ Gustaui, et esurio et sitio” (cf. Ecclus. xxiv. 21). 

? I would refer the reader to an article on Augustine in the forthcoming 
one-volume edition of Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography, _ 


§ 16a. I shall in the sequel refer to the article in question as ‘* Aug.” 
3 Aug. § 16a fin. (and see below, p. 199). 


184 REGNUM DEI 





tives of the visible organised body by setting over 
against it the heavenly and eternal Church, the reality 
of which the society on earth is the shadow. And in 
the doctrine of grace, it accounts not wholly but un- 
questionably in part for his increasing insistence upon 
the eternal predestinating Will of God to which the 
salvation of man is in the ultimate resort carried back. 
y Augustine’s idealism was rooted in his personal 
[ religious history. The Platonic philosophy had, by 
destroying his early materialism, brought him in- 
tellectually within range of the appeal of the Catholic 
Church,! which had always found an echo in his heart 
of hearts ; it had been supplemented rather than super- 
seded by the preaching of Ambrose who was the chief 
human instrument in his conversion; and it remained 
as the philosophical substratum not only of his 
theology but of his intimate spiritual conviction, of 
his communion with Gop. There is then, in reserve, 
throughout Augustine’s utterances on doctrinal and 
even practical questions, this element of abstract 
idealism,—the appeal to transcendental reality, to the 
aspect of things as viewed sub specie aeternitatis. 

(@) But secondly Augustine did not live in the 
atmosphere of abstractions. On the contrary, no 
Christian has ever given himself with more single- 
‘hearted allegiance to the Church as he found it and to 
j the course of practical Church Life.2 He does not 
need to arrive at an ideal Church by @ friori construc- 
-»> tion. What has made him a Christian is the appeal of 
the Church as it actually is: “The grandeur of her 


If 
- 
’ 


1 See Conf. vil. ix. etc. ; de vit. Beat. i. 4, and Aug. § 5. 
2 Aug. § 164. 


ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM 185 


organisation, the ordered ranks of her Episcopate, the 
authoritative tradition, superseding individual enquiry, 
the uniformity of her dogma in the face of all error 
and variations of opinion, the majesty of her mysteri- 
ous rites, the rich resources of her means of grace.” ! 
Augustine’s was not a nature to be satisfied with 


abstract idealism, imagination and devotion demanded % 


a satisfaction which he found in the practical life of the 
Church. & His personality found its necessary freedom 
of scope for action, and its equally necessary limitation, 
in the environment of a life. which he felt to be 
immeasurably greater than his own. When he says? 
that he should not be a believer in the gospel unless 
the authority of the Catholic Church .moved him to 
believe, he is not insisting on dogmatic or hierarchical 
authority as a court of appeal on doctrine; what he 
has in his mind is the immanent authority of the 
Church, as seen by him, asa witness to the truth of 
the Christian Religion.?. In’ other words Augustine 


as in a sense a Catholic before he became a Christian. - - 


his being so, his Catholic Churchmanship was not 
only a matter of intellectual conviction but of deep 
habitual emotion, He owed his whole self to his 
conversion, and his conversion he owed to the silent 
argument of the Catholic Church. By the Church is 
inspired all that incomparable warmth of love, grati- 


1 Reuter, p. 98. 2¢. Ep. Fund. 6 (written in 397). 

3 Conf. VI. xi. 19: Pereant omnia, et dimittamus haec uana et inania ; 
conferamus nos ad solam inquisitionem ueritatis. . . . Non uacat, non est 
inane quod fam eminens culmen auctoritatis Christianae fidet toto orbe 
diffunditur. Nunquam talia pro nobis diuinitus agerentur, si morte 
corporis etiam uita animae consumeretur. Quid cunctamur igitur relicta 
spe saeculi conferre nos totos ad quaerendum Deum et uitam beatam. 


. 


La 
ur" 


186 REGNUM DEI 






tude, compunction, ineffable yearning of the inmost 
soul, which speaks to GOD in the Confessions. ft his: 
passion of devotion! to the Catholic Church, then, was 
inspired in Augustine not by an idea, but by a visible 
fact, by the life of a visible society, which worked 
upon him at first from without, but afterwards as an 
inward personal experience.) It would be difficult to 
overstate Augustine’s influence in this respect upon the 
tone and expression of Catholic feeling for the Church, 
as it is difficult to overrate the deepening and enrich- 
ment which personal religion in the whole Western 
’ Church owes to him. But just as our unreserved 
recognition of this latter fact would gravely mislead, 
were it to blind us in any way to the reality and 
depth of individual religion in the three centuries 
before Augustine, as it stands revealed to us in the 
innumerable memorials of Christian life enshrined in 
the deeds, the words, the sufferings, of those of every 
rank, class, age, sex, date, and country who lived and 
_ died for Christ; so it cannot be too often insisted upon 
that the belief in the Christian Church as the one 
visible Society, to which the work of Christ’s Kingdom 
is confided and its promises are expressly attached was 
in no sense “ Augustinian,” as if originated by Augustine 
or under his influence. 
That we believe “in remission of sins through the 
Holy Church,” that “he cannot have GoD for his 
aK Father who has not the Church for his Mother,” that 
salvation is in the Church alone, “extra ecclesiam nulla 
salus,” were ideas in full currency very long before 


1 Enarr. in Psa. \xxxviii. 14. 
2 See above, p. 174, note 2, and Cyrill. Hier. Cavech, xviii. 26. 


ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM 187 


Augustine’s time, and he simply entered upon them\ | 
as part of the traditional heritage of Catholic belief? > 4 
Diverse shades of interpretation no doubt there were, 
especially the theoretical limits of the Church had not 
been satisfactorily laid down; but while it was still 
possible for the plain man to distinguish without hesita- 
tion between the general Christian body and the sectional 
and separatist movements which from time to time 
broke away,—while “securus iudicat Orbis Terrarum”? 
was available as a ready test, such theoretical questions 
were of minor urgency. Broadly speaking, it was 
agreed that the Church, outside of which there was no 
salvation, was the obviously visible general body of 
Christians, the caodxi éxxdnola, as to the identity of 
which there could be no dona fide mistake. ‘“ What- 
ever novelty there may have been in Augustine’s 
presentation of the matter, at least he did not originate 
the idea of a visible Church.” It would be truer to 
one side of the facts, to say that he originated the idea 
of an invzsible Church.' The suggestion of such an 
idea was present, as we have seen, in the background 
of transcendent idealism which qualified his intellectual 
appreciation of all visible things. 

(¢) But its application to the idea of the Church 
comes out in connexion with a third side of his mind 
and work which remains to be noticed,—-his contribu- \ 
tion to the doctrine of Grace. Augustine was, in ‘ 
relation to this subject, unconscious of any desire or / 
tendency to do more than uphold the traditional 


1 See references in Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 13 sq. and 
notes. 

2¢. Ep. Parmen. ii. iv. 24. 5 Gore (ubi supra). 

4 Aug. § 10, and § 16c. 





188 REGNUM DEI 


teaching of those who had gone before him, he was 
unconscious of any even implicit divergence between 
his own instincts and those of Greek-speaking Christen- 
dom.!' But in spite of this, the fact remains that he 
stamped upon Latin theology a character markedly 
different from that of the Greek Fathers, and naturalised 
in the Latin Church itself conceptions which had been 
either absent from or unfamiliar to its earlier thought. 
Augustine had to formulate and develop his doctrine of 
Grace under the stress of an acute theological contro- 
versy. But it is now recognised that his characteristic 
convictions were in all essentials fully formed long 
before Pelagius came forward to oppose him. This 
was in 411, and Pelagius was roused to protest by the 
language of the Confessions, published ten years before. 
In fact Augustine had formulated his doctrine of Grace 
as the result of his studies in St. Paul’s Epistles, 
especially those to Romans and Corinthians, as early 
as the year 396.2. His earlier view, he tells us, had 
been that man was indeed dependent upon divine 
grace for his salvation, but that faith, without which 
Grace could not be received, was man’s own spontaneous 
act. But St. Paul’s question: What hast thou that 
thou hast not received? had given him pause, and 

gradually worked a revolution in his mind. If man 
contributes anything,—if the difference, between the 
effectual operation of Grace in the case of one man and 
its frustration in the case of another, ultimately goes 
back to the different response of the will in the two 


1 Aug. § 11, and Reuter, pp. 153-170. 

2 The two books ad Sizmplicianum, published in 397, mark the change. 
See de Praedest. iv., de dono Pers. xx., and Loofs’ article on Augustine 
in the new edition of Herzog (Hauck). 


ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM 189 


cases, then it is with Free Will, not Grace, that the 
crucial decision rests which determines whether Grace 
is to act or no; Free Will, not Grace is the ultimate 
turning-point of a man’s relation to GOD. To the 
Augustine of the Confessions, conscious of nothing but 
self-will and self-deception on his own part, deeply 
convinced that nothing but the grace of GOD had set 
his own will free, nay, had moved it, to believe, to 
repent, such a conclusion was impossible to rest in. 
And as, in the years following his conversion, he 
gradually exchanged the methods and temper of the 
Platonic dialectician for the results of deeper study of 
St. Paul, the assumption appeared to him not only 
impossible but irreligious also. [In utter self-condem- 
nation and self-abasement before GOD, in unreserved 
whole-hearted gratitude of self-surrender to His Will, 
nothing could satisfy him but the unqualified reference 
of everything that had made him what he now was, 
that had made him other than what he once had been, 
to the gratia Christi the free gift of GOD in Christ. \ 
Domine da quod iubes. This strong and genuinely 
religious predisposition was clinched, and érystallised_ 
into an unalterable e theological conviction, | not_only by 
the text_to-which L. have already’ referred, | 1, but_by by tl the 
general. -tenor of | ty St. Paul's doctrine, In particular, the 
ninth chapter of the - Epistle to the Romans fitted his 
own spiritual experience with startling exactness. “It 
is not of him that runs or wills, but of Gop that 
showeth mercy.”. In argument, at the end of his life, 
with the brethren of Southern Gaul who rejected his 


1 On the centrality of this in Augustine’s thought, see Reuter, pp. 45, 
49, 51, 52, 19-25, 97. 


190 REGNUM DEI 





three characteristic doctrines of the total depravity 
of man, of the irresistibleness of Divine Grace, and 
of absolute predestination, he refers them with perfect 
right to his two books addressed in 397, fifteen years 
before the Pelagian controversy, to Simplicianus, bishop 
of Milan,! as proof that his convictions on these points, 
derived from his study of St. Paul, were of no recent 
standing. 5 

All alike were agreed in building the certainty of 
personal salvation upon the divine election of individuals. 
But where Augustine differed from the Massilians, 
and we may add from Jerome also and from general 
Catholic opinion before his own time, was as to the 
basis of this election itself. 

It was generally assumed, and the assumption has 
the apparent support of St. Paul in one passage,” that 
GOD, foreseeing those who would be faithful, predestined 
them to eternal life—“ whom he foreknew, he predes- 
tinated.” But Augustine will not allow the fundamental 
assumption. To GOD, to predestine is to foreknow, 
and to foreknow is to predestine. If election is 
determined by any merit, whether of works or of faith 
matters not, then the old impossible result comes back, 

. Free Will not Grace is the pivot upon which salvation 
turns. GOD’S purpose, on the contrary, is secundum ~ 
electionem ;* the cali of grace follows election, does not, 
even in divine foreknowledge, determine or precede it—~~ 
election, then, is absolute, prior to and independent of 
anything in the history of the elect. It may be allowed _ 


4 
ne 
i 
: 
“ 
‘ 


1 Supra, note 2, 
2 Rom. viii. 29, 67 oto mpoéyvw, Kat mpowpice, K.T.D. 
3 Rom. ix. 11. ( 


ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM .tog1 


of the Eagaolicn. Church ; but all these ins will be 
not. the conditions but the results of their election, 
upon which alone the question of all questions depends. 
Many fulfil all these conditions, but if they are not of 
the elect they will avail nothing: they will fall away 
either openly or secretly, either in life or in death, for 
they lack the supreme gift which is the crucial sign of 
election, the donum perseverantiae. ‘This gift may be 
in store, again, for many who are now ungodly and 
alien from the Church; in life or death, but surely as a ) 
rule visibly to others as to the Church, they will join | 
the body of Christ; the donum perseverantiae, the gift 
of final reconciliation, is theirs already assured to them 
by GOD whose gifts and calling are without repentanc 
Meanwhile, no doubt the call of Grace comes to all,) 
“many are called”; but not all are called “ con-| 
gruenter” *—in such a way, that is, as to ensure that ¢ 
they will answer to that call. To the non-elect the 
divine appeal comes as a vocatio non congrua, they will 
disobey from tie first, or perhaps they will respond for 
a time,—for a lifetime; but to no purpose, for they, 
are not marked out for the gift of perseverance, the 
number of the predestined is known to GOD, and- 
unalterable; the vocatio congrua comes to the elect’ 
alone, and to the rest it can never come. Terrible as 
is the doctrine of predestination, terrible as is its 
elaboration in the doctrine of the donum perseveran- 
tiae, surely the doctrine of the (caita non congrua is 


1 Ad Simplic. 1. xiii. fin. See also what he says of the final grace of 
perseverance: ‘‘multi enim possunt habere, mu//us amittere,” de don. 
Ler, Vis 


192 REGNUM DEI 


the culminating point of all that is terrible in his 
system.! Yet how, on Augustine’s principles, could 
the case be conceived otherwise? At any rate, con- 
scious as Augustine was of the advance of his own 
mind on these subjects, he remained wholly unconscious 
of what was none the less the fact, that he had effected 
a revolution in Catholic opinion” For in face of the 
personal influence of Augustine, the counter-efforts of 
the Churchmen of Southern Gaul could effect nothing. 
The antithesis of Pelagianism, with its patent break- 
down on the crucial point of infant baptism,? was 
perhaps needed to secure the adhesion of Western 
Christendom to Augustine’s doctrine of grace; at any 
rate Augustine as the leader of the movement against 
Pelagius carried the Church with him, practically to 
all lengths. Africa was steadily with him from the 
first. Rome, where Pelagius was more powerful than 
elsewhere, proved teachable in the person of her 
bishops, first of Innocent, then with a moment of 
hesitation in that of Zosimus,+— finally with the 
unreserved adhesion of Caelestinus, Leo, Hilary. Italy 

1 Reuter, pp. 57, 67 sq., 81 sq., follows out with painful exactness the 
life-history of a convert who, under Augustine’s guidance, passes through 
the catechumenate, baptism, and the successive deneficia gratiae of which the 
Church is the home (see below, p. 201, note 3), only to learn that there is 
after all no certainty that he is a member of the Church in the true sense, 
or that his prayers (/ides ovans, see Reuter’s reff. p. 79) for the one decisive 
beneficium, the donum perseverantiae, have any prospect of being heard. 
But he fully allows (p. 72 sq.) that Augustine, while holding in theory the 
absolute secrecy of the divine Election, practically treated it as sometimes 
recognisable, e.g. in the Church’s martyrs: ‘‘Er hat nie ernstlich daran 
gezweifelt, das alle Martyrer Ger Kirche zu den e/ects, d. h. den definitiv 
Heiligen, gehdrten; darum nicht gezweifelt, wez/ sie jene als Heilige 
verkiindigte und verehrte.” This, however, is compromise, not synthesis 


(see Reuter, p. 73). ' 
2 Aug. §§ 10d fin., 16¢. 5 Aug. § Iod init. 4 Aug. § 10a fin., 0. 





ELEMENTS OF AUGUSTINIANISM 193 


rallied in the person of Paulinus of Nola, drawn more 
perhaps by instinctive sympathy with Augustine’s 
Catholic piety than by profound interest in his cause, 
—in Gaul itself Augustine found his most ardent 
supporters." 

But the ecclesiastical instincts of average Catholic 
Churchmanship had grown up in an atmosphere of 
Free Will equipped with—sacraments, to which the RY 
Augustinian doctrine of Grace was not, nor ever could 
become, ee Augustine himself, as we 


shall see, never rédched a Teal synthesis of the two, and 


inthe sequg],.the latent incompatibility of_the-tua A) 


makes_i SS felt. True, Augustine left a 
permanent, a elible stamp, upon ecclesiastical life 


and thought. The conception of Grace was thence 
forth never in the West so nearly RR Cppraern — / 

as it practically remained in the Greek Church. 

sacraments were held in a deepened ‘sense, with a con: 

text of Grace, preventing, predisposing, concomitant, 

which conditioned the grace of the sacrament itself. 7 
This was largely Augustine’s work. But from the 

first, it began to be evident that Augustine’s character- 

istic paradoxes must be modified if Augustinianism was 


to remain the standard of ecclesiastical thought. This 
was apparent at Orange in. 529,° still more so in the 


= Especially Prosper of Aquitaine and the monk Hilarius (on whom see 
Dict. Christ. Biogr. vol, iv. p. 4934). 

2 Reuter, pp. 30-38. 

5 The twenty-five Canons of the small Council of Orange consist mainly 
of extracts from Augustine and Prosper. They assert the powerlessness of 
man, even if unfallen, for good without prevenient grace (3, 4, 12, 19, 21, 
22), which is, however, as a rule assumed to be daftisma/ grace (see 13, and 
conclusion) ; but they are silent as to irresistible grace and as to predestina- 
tion, except that, in the conclusion, the supposition that ‘‘any are by divine 


13 


194 REGNUM DEI 





controversy of the ninth century,! and we have hardly 
yet seen the final issue of the questions which Augustine 
bequeathed for solution to the Church of after times. 


III 


I have said that Augustine himself never succeeded 
in effecting a synthesis between his working conception 
of the Catholic Church and his theological doctrine of 
Grace. The difficulty was a very real one. Taking 
first the mere question of extent, what was the real 
Body of Christ, the true Bride of whom the glorious 
things of Holy Scripture are spoken? Was it the 
Church as it appears on earth, the organised hier- 
archical body, or only those members of it who were 
worthy of their calling? The parables of Christ, the 
experience of Puritan schisms,—Montanist, Novatian, 
Donatist,—might seem to decide this question. The 
visible Church is the Body of Christ, in spite of the 
“hypocrites” whom she may for the present include. 
Their presence belongs to the present imperfection of 
the Church, but does not diminish her essential 
prerogative as the Body and Kingdom of Christ. But 
yet, as we saw at the outset of this Lecture,|it is those 


power predestined ad malum [z.e. ‘‘to sin’’?] is repudiated, and those, 
‘if there be any such,” who hold it are anathematised. The reconciliation 
of the Augustinian and ‘‘semi-Pelagian” parties was therefore effected by 
shelving (perhaps wisely) the insoluble difficulties of ‘* perseverance” (10), 
of free will (13), and of predestination. See the text of the Canons in 
Hahn, § 103; also Seeberg, Dogmengesch. i. 323, 4. 

1 Harnack, Dogme gesch. iii. 261-270, in a very interesting account of the 
Gottschalk controversy, points out that Southern Gaul (Council of Valence, 
855), the former stronghold of semi-Pelagianism, now maintained the 
stricter Augustinian view against the ‘“‘kirchliche Empirie” of Raban, 
Hinkmar, and the Council of Quiercy-sur-Oise (853). 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH 195 


who are truly living members of Christ and they alone, , * 
not any organisation or government, that gave the 
Church, in Augustine’s eyes, the character of the 
Kingdom of Gop. And not only so; behind and 
above the present distinction of the sincere Christians 
and the hypocrites, the “ fideliter et pie viventes,” the 
“temporaliter stantes,’ and the at present unworthy 
members of the visible Church, there is the vital and 
eternal distinction between those who belong to the 
certus numerus+ of the predestined, though they may 
be at present outside the Church or unworthy members 
of it,2 and the non-elect, who may be living faithfully 
and piously now, but who have no hope of salvation, 
no true part or lot in the communio sanctorum. The 
elect is inwardly and outwardly indistinguishable from 
the non-elect; “nonne utrique vocati fuerant, utrique 
ex impiis iustificati?”? {There is then on earth a..’ 
visible Church of Christ containing good and bad, elect 
and non-elect, and there are also a number, unalterably 
known to GOD, of those predestined to Life, some within 
the visible Church, some outside it.) Which of these 
“two. the communio externa or the communio sanctorum,* 


lade cor, eh Gaus xili, 39, ‘‘ita certus... ut non addatur eis 
quisquam, n. ‘minuatm & eis” 5 40, ‘‘numerus praedestinatus”; 42, 
“istum certiss1. ~ et felicissit numerum”; and see the whole con- 
text, especially in 340. “iat 
* Jbid, vii. 16: ‘Aut si qui sunt quorum [fides] deficit, reparatur 
» airtequam uita ista finiatur,” 

8 hid, ix. 21. 

*The communio sanctorum will from time tt time include those who 
ar«" incere Christians, but not of the certus num'*uUs (supra, note 1); so 
a S, strictness it is not identifiable with the  r (Reuter, p. 66 sq.). 
Du 


bearing this in mind, we may, for cc , Without departing 
very far from Augvustine’s usual language. mmunio sanctorum 
as practically momma the electd (cf. 7 5 XVili, 23). 


196 REGNUM DEI 


is the real Church identifiable with the kingdom of 
Christ on earth? . 

We must remember that to Augustine the Real is 
the timeless, the immaterial, the Good!’ The historically 
conditioned partakes of Reality only in the second or 
in a still remoter degree. The Real again is the Good ; 
imperfect goodness means a lower degree of Reality. 
Augustine’s predestinarianism certainly grew upon him 
in the last twenty-five years of his life? the period to 
which his most mature writings belong; and this fact 
must be set down not merely to the pressure of the 
Pelagian controversy, but to the steady influence of his 
metaphysical theory of being which led him to fall back 
in thought upon things as viewed sub specie aeterni, and 
which tended to neutralise, from-this-point.of view» the 
value of all _institutions which belong to space and _ time. 
We have to deal then with a very delicate analytical 
problem, that of disengaging two really disparate 
strains of thought in Augustine’s mind, with a view to 
assign to them their relative predominance? The result 
may be tentatively stated in this way: In estimating 
the significance of the Church as the Body of Christi 
investing the Church with all the attr) hich 
command the devotion of a Christiar 14 pe .g to the 
idea of the Kingdom of God. Augustine ailds upon 
the conception of the Churcr és bic Loe munio sanctorum, 
the total number of Gr * 


yb’s Elect. 
1 Aug. § 16a; see also 7 84, 461, 464 $4: ete 
2 Reuter, p. 102. ceuter, PP- 360, 58, Ay 4 "a aes 
4 Certainly in the se i itt: P. oe eceviam sur’ on 
ecclesia,” de unit. er that not all who pie «* qui sic sunt u« 
domo per communic %¢ Bapt. Vu. lii. ae a sint per diversi- 
tatem morum.” IT entorum ut extra Tho were outside the 


‘ne held that the 


“In this sense* he 





ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH 197 


makes his own the saying which the Church had inherited 
from Cyprian, extra ecclesiam nulla salus. But in? 
applying this ideal doctrine of the Church, Augustine | 
is very apt to pass to the Catholic Church as it was ; 
the externa communio is simply invested with the ideal 
attributes evolved from the consideration of the xwmerus 
preedestinatorum This is no synthesis but a simple 
transference of predicates from one subject to another ; 
Augustine is not always unconscious of the transition, 
but he speaks rather frequently as though the subjects 
were the same Yet he nowhere identifies them} 
expressly, on the contrary he expressly and carefully) 
distinguishes them.2 That many belong to the visible 
Church who are not in the transcendent communio 
sanctorum he has of course no difficulty in admitting, 
he insists upon it. But practically he not infrequently 
seems to assume that all the predestined now on earth 
are to be thought of as included in the communio 
externa* If this is his true thought, the Church on 


Church might yet be ‘‘in ecclesia” in the ultimate and real sense is a more 
difficult question, and will be considered below (see also Reuter, p. 64, note 


4). 

1 There is also, to some slight extent, a converse transference. Reuter, 
p- 65. 

2 Reuter, pp. 68, 69, 98-100; Serm, 213. 7, 214. 11; Emarr. in Psa, 
CREVI) J: 


3 de Bapt. iv. ii. 4: [Merely nominal Christians] non sunt in Ecclesia 
de qua dicitur Una est columba, etc. Cf. did. vil. li. 99. In treating of 
the fundamental doctrines in the Azchiridion, he has in view the Church 
as communio sanctorum ; see chaps. v., lvi., Ixii., lxiv. (Migne). 

4 de corrept. et Gratia, ix. 22. Reuter (p. 64, note 4) has in vain searched 
Augustine for a clear statement that “qui non sunt in sacramentorum 
communione cum ecclesia non sunt in ecclesia ” (the nearest are de Baft. 
Vil. xvi. 21, ‘‘non autem habent Dei caritat:“\2 qui ecclesiae non di/igunt 
unitatem,” etc., and Zf. 185. 50: ‘* Non est'© Sem particeps diuinae caritatis 
qui hostis est unitatis po habent itaqu ’ 4°" {tum Sanctum, qui sunt extra 
ecclesiam,” or strong¢ still, Z/. 141. 5: wnisquis ergo ab hac catholica 

( 
} 


— 


198 REGNUM DEI 





earth is bounded by three concentric circles,—Lfirst that 
of the visible Society, containing wheat and tares alike ; 
within that the inner circle of consistent and faithful 
Christians, not all of whom however are truly vessels 
made for honour, ze. elect, or destined to persevere; 
then inmost of all the elect members of the true Church, P 
the Church of eternity, whose presence in the heart , 
and core of the visible Society distinguishes that 
Society as the Body and Kingdom of Christ. But this 

is not quite Augustine’s view. For firstly there are the 

», elect outside the Church, who are destined to come in 

and to persevere, while many now within will fall away, 

the last first and the first last. This will take place," 
Augustine assumes, before death ;—so that although at 

no given moment the Catholic Church contains the 
whole of the elect living on earth, yet none of the elect 

die outside the Church. This thought certainly depre- 

ciates the paramount 1 necessity of the correptio? and 

other means of grace which the Church supplies, but 
perhaps not more so than is demanded by the Parable 

of the Labourers called at the eleventh hour. | But there. 

is a further side of Augustine’s teaching to be con- t 
sidered here. “Augustine does not limit salvation / 
through Christ to believers in the historical Christian © 


ecclesia fuerit separatus . . . non habet uitam, sed ira Dei manet super eum.” 
The question is whether ex¢evna/ separation is compatible in some cases 
with real though internal “ esse in ecclesia.” 

1 de dono Pers. 8: ‘* Perseuerantia quae in aeternum saluos facit, tempori 
quidem huius uitae, non tamer peracto sed ei quod usque ad finem restat, 
necessaria est” ; and see supra, p. 195, note 2. 

* For the idea of correptio see Matt. xviii. 15 (Vulg.), ‘‘corripe eum.” 
Augustine applies the worc sum up the Church’s resources of moral 


appeal and discipline. On ‘atement in the text, see Reuter, pp. 32, 
83. 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH 199 


Religion. On the contrary he believes. thatit--has > 


never_been inaccessible to those Who-were-worthy- of-it. A 


What we now call the Christian Religion, he says in a 
well-known passage, is as old as the world—the same 
faith, the same salvation, in diverse forms correspond- 
ing to the times, has been always, now more clearly 
now more obscurely, made known to men This 
thought of Augustine’s at first reminds us of that of 
some of the Apologists and of the Alexandrian Fathers, 
that all who in every age lived in accordance with 
reason were really Christians, because they shared in 
the presence of the Logos, the light which lightens every 
man that cometh into the world. Moreover the ap- 
parent divergence of the idea of the “ worthy ”:—“ Nulli 
unquam deficit cui dignus fuit”—from Augustine’s view 
of man’s helpless bondage to sin, and his well-known 
condemnation of the virtues of the heathen as splendid 
vices? inclines one to detect here a strand of hetero- 
geneous influence in Augustine’s thought, derived 
neither from his ecclesiastical loyalty nor from his 
analysis of the Pauline doctrine of Grace,—rather an) 


isolated suggestion followed up without—relation to / 


other lines of thought~and conviction. But the view~ 


under consideration is too persistent* in Augustine’s 
writings, especially those of the last twenty years of his 
life, to permit us to dispose of it in this way. On the 


.1 Ep. 102; see especially § 12, and cf. de pecc. mer. et rem. Il. Xxix. 473 
de Civ, Det, Xvi, xlvii. (other reff. Reuter, p. 91, note). 

2 Supra, Lect. IV. p. 154. 

8 de Civ. Det, XIX. xxv., XXI. xxv. He allows, however, that Fabricius 
is ‘‘minus malus” than Catiline, and will be more mildly punished ;— 
rejecting the ‘‘ Stoic” view, that all vices are equal. Cf. de Civ. Det, XX1. 
xvi. fin. ; Zp. 138. 17; de Sp. et Litera, 48. 

4 See above, note 1 and reff. 


¥. 


J 


me 


200 REGNUM DEI 





contrary, it appears to hang very directly together with 
his theory of reality referred to above, and to have been . 
brought into conscious correlation with his doctrine of 
predestination. Reviewing the question in the latter 
connexion,! he explains that the “digni” to whom 
salvation through Christ has in all ages been accessible 
were not “worthy” from their own merit, but because 
they were marked out as such by God’s predestinating 
grace. Primarily no doubt this applies to the saints of 
the Old Testament. Zo them was revealed, obscurely 
indeed but truly, the grace of Christ which to us is 
revealed more plainly—prius occultius postea mantfestius. 
But Augustine does not limit the application of the 
\principle to them. There are cases like Job and 
~Melchizedek, who were not members of the sacred 
commonwealth, and the Sibyl, who was remoter still 
from all contact with it. There was indeed never 
more than one soczety identifiable with the czvztas Dez on 
_earth, but that does not preclude us? from believing 
that individuals may have been within the number of 
the elect, though never visibly included in the “ external 
_communion” of Gop’s people. In_a_sense.then 
Augustine's narrow Diadcrreen te him-directly 


number of the elect is a secret known to God ae no 
man can be sure of his own election, much less can we 
be certain of that of others a 
kind lie ex hypothest beyond our powers of ascertain- 
ment, and to argue from them is impossible. But the 


cases of this abnormal 


1 de Praed. 17. 
? Augustine makes this distinction, but I have mislaid the reference. 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH 201 


principle remains, and makes it impossible to hold as a 
formal theory the necessary inclusion in the visible Church 


on earth of the whole number of the predestined. / 
As the As the result, then, Augustine's ti s transcendent eine! 


his predestinarianism_on the one hand, and on the other 


ee 


ee at anship, his i istence_on on 
ne as the ex exclusive pale of | 


a tiie a tie an 
salvation, remain unreconciled; they lie ‘side by side as | 


a 


J 


ee ———— 
Teparate.cloments in his mind, incapable of any true \ 


esis. The synthesis we have -been discussing,— 
that the visible externa communio is the wider body, 
which, until it is purified of its unworthy elements, 
contains as its inmost core the communio sanctorum, 
the elect, the body of whom now living on earth must 
for practical purposes be assumed to be identical with 
the externa communio, rests upon no inward principle 
at all. / The teaching, worship, and sacraments of the 
Church. ‘are_means to an end, namely, the salvation of 


"souls ; but between that end_and the | ‘means _there is 
not_in Augustine’s_ theory a true_causal_connexion.2 
The Church with all the means of correptio at her 
command unquestionably purifies men’s lives, en- 
lightens their minds, heals the spiritually sick, and 
assures the benefits * of grace to their souls. But all 


1“ Appellamus ergo nos et electos et Christi discipulos et Dei filios quia 
sic appellandi sunt quos regeneratos pie uiuere cernimus,” ~ ~rvept. et 
Grat, ix, 22; cf. Serm. 214. 11. ~ 

? Reuter, p. 82. : z 

5 By the term deneficia gratiae Augustine denoted the graduated course of 
spiritual stages through which the Christian was expected to pass. He 
probably found iiis scheme traditionally established, but he certainly 
modified the traditional significance of some of its stages—e.g. that of 
Final Perseverance. (See the careful note of Reuter, p. 584. The passage 
he cannot identify, “*Distat, et quod distet Pee notum est,” etc., is from 
Serm. 295. xix. 18.) 

} 
i 


) 
; 
} 


6 


202 REGNUM DEI 


the while, unless they are marked out for the last and 
crowning beneficium, the gift of perseverance, they. are 
‘not zm reality separated from the “mass of perdition. “J 
Salvation really has its single root in the eternal 
election of GOD, elect and non-elect pass it may 
well be through the same earthly history; in faith, 
baptism, the correptio of the Church, the eucharist, 
they are together side by side, and apparently 
with the same immediate result; both alike pray 
for the crowning grace of perseverance, but one is 
taken and the other left, while the sinner whom a 
deathbed repentance brings into the Church, and who 
, has never passed through the discipline of the Christian 
life, may all along have been of the number of the 
( elect from which the other, his faith and piety notwith- 
\ standing, has all along been excluded. 

Augustine’s predestinarianism, then, is at issue with 
his conception of the visible Catholic Church, known 
as such to all mankind by her organisation, teaching, 
and worship, as the body which administers the grace 
of Christ with the sure promise of salvation to those 
who belong to her in heart and soul, and faithfully use 
her means of grace. His lofty appreciation of the 
Catholic Church is in no small part the transference to 
the externa communio of the eternal and indestructible 


preroge’ _ cf the communion of saints in the sens 
of the predestin. ‘he only real Church in_ th 


1 This stated with terrible clearness ae co”vept. et Grat. ae 

2 Zoid, v. 8: ‘‘Nullo homine corripiente,” and vii. 13° TPs Church is 
a place of preparation for the elect ; but the preparation is no condition of 
the election. The elect are distinguished (déscretz) from the massa perdt- 
tionts by the Javacrum regenercctonis ; but no one can really be discretus 
unless he has the donum perscverantiae (de corrept. et Grat. vii. 12, 16). 





—. i. 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH 203 


Augustinian sense of Reakie and it is in so far as 
the visible Church corresponds to this transcendental 
idea, in so far as “even now”—on earth—“his saints’ 
reign with him,” in so far as the wheat is now “ being 
gathered” for the eternal harvest, that Augustine 
identifies the visible Church with the Kingdom of 
Gop.! 

It is possible to accept the identification, but to set 
aside the ideas to which it is correlative in Augustine’s 
mind; and this was in fact the course substantially 
taken by later ecclesiastical development. But this 
is to give the identification a new meaning, foreign 
alike to Augustinian and to pre-Augustinian thought. 

Or, again, it is possible, especially in an age when 
there is no searching and inevitable problem confront- 
ing men as to the conception and functions of the 
Church, to combine Augustine’s predestinarian con- 
victions and his ecclesiastical enthusiasm much as 
Augustine did himself, without pressing them to their » 
inherently. divergent i issues. This was done in the 
generations which immediately followed Augustine, 
when the great teacher’s authority had enlisted in his 
following all the most active Churchmanship of the 
West, especially the support of the Apostolic See, 
while the semi-Augustinianism of the school of Vincent 
and Cassian and Faustus was branded with the some- 
what harsh label of semi-Pelagianism. For the 
moment, the Church was carried away partly by the 
recoil from Pelagianism, partly by the character and 
earnestness of Augustine, and it was no time to analyse 
critically the inward logic of his doctrine. 


1 See above, p. 172. 


204 REGNUM DEI 


But in truth Augustine had left a heritage of diffi- 
culty for the ages to come. We may recognise that 
the doctrine of predestination exercises a spiritualising 
influence on Augustine’s conception of the Church, but 
was not the cost a heavy one? To us, accustomed by 
Butler to view life as a probation, does not a doctrine 
which logically excludes any true idea of probation 
seem to uproot the base of sober morality, — to 
neutralise even the thought of GOD’s moral govern- 


‘ment of the world? And yet the problem which is 


ee 


at the root of—all—this __apparent—-paradoxdefies 
theoretical solution, To affirm moral responsibility 
without allowing human merit, in other words to 
satisfy the demands of the moral sense without in- 
fringing those of the religious sense, was the task 
lightly taken in hand by Pelagius, more cautiously 
attempted, but without any real success, by the semi- 
Pelagians. If they were wrong, it is hard to resist the 
alternative conclusion that Augustine was right. He 
set out from the demand of the religious sense for 
sabsolute self-abasement in GOD’s sight as the very 
first elementary necessity of religion. But very soon 
~ he had virtually undermined the truth—which he yet 
. did not cease to affirm in words—of man’s moral 
responsibility. 

It is indeed easy to content oneself with half- 
solutions,—in fact it is necessary to forego any com- 
plete solution. But if so, let us at any rate not 
delude ourselves with the appearance of a solution 


without the reality. A facile naturalistic determinism, \ 


which surrenders responsibility and merit alike, affronts 
morality with no corresponding gain to religion; by 






ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE CHURCH ~- 205 


lowering human nature in its own eyes it surrenders 
the problem of even stating the facts adequately to 
human nature as it knows itself to be. Pelagianism, 
the vulgar doctrine of Free Will, the shallow appeal 
to things as they seem, has never appealed to the 
religious instinct. The naive pre-Augustinian doctrine 
of Grace, the assumption of Free Will equipped with 
sacraments, contained virtually, as Augustine saw, the 
refutation of Pelagianism ;! Augustine’s claim through- 
out was that he was simply vindicating the traditional 
belief of the Church. This was not literally true,— 
especially as regards predestination,—but it is virtually 
true in so far as on the Pelagian theory the need of 
even sacramental grace has no foundation in principle. 
Augustine, from this point of view, simply extended to 
Grace in general, prevenient and crowning grace as well 
as concomitant grace, the principle involved in infant 
baptism, that man can_make no step to Godward 
except GOD be beforehand with_ him. But in doing 
SO, logic carried him ates than it had carried St. 
Paul. The dilemma of responsibility without merit\ 
was unsolved, as it is insoluble; St. Paul had offered 
no solution, he had simply contented himself with affirm- 
ing responsibility while denying merit. Augustine’s 
difference from St. Paul was one of proportion and 
balance, which he sacrificed by carrying his premises 
to their conclusions in a subject-matter where logic is / 
no safe guide. 

But our purpose is not to discuss the question on its 
merits so much as to record what Augustine actually 
held, and of this there is no doubt at all. 

1 See Reuter, p. 40. 


’ 


206 REGNUM DEI 


IV 


Augustine’s great influence in moulding the Western 
theory of the Church is best understood if we consider 
what is on the whole his greatest work, the de Civitate 
Dei upon which the last twenty years! of his life were 
to a great extent employed. 

In the year 410, for the first time for eight hundred 
years, Rome had been taken and sacked by a barbarian 
force. But in the year 410 after Christ the impression 
produced by the catastrophe was very different from 
anything that was contemplated in B.c. 390. The 
capture by the Gauls of an important Italian town left 
its deep impress upon local tradition, but the world at 
large was little concerned. But the capture of the 
Eternal City by Alaric caused men’s hearts to fail 
them for fear? The imperial might, the invincible 
sovereignty of Rome, was accepted as part of the 
established order of nature; when Rome fell, men felt 
the solid earth giving way beneath them, and the 
powers of heaven were shaken. Roman and barbarian, 
Christian and pagan alike, were filled with something 
of religious terror. Christians saw the bowl of wrath 
poured out upon the seat of the Beast, and looked for 
the end of the world to follow forthwith ; pagans saw in 
the fall of Rome the vengeance of Rome’s neglected 
gods, or the effect of a new and enervating religion. 
Rome had perished “ temporibus Christianis.” 

1 Strictly the years 412-426. Augustine died August 28, 430. But the 
idea of the two czvitates occurs in de catech. rud. written in 400. The 
Church is spoken of by Epiphanius (c. A.D. 377) as médio Qcod, Exp. 
ek Roman Society in the Last Century of the Roman Empire, p. 61. 





“4 
é 
x 
he 
? 
4 


THE CIVITAS, DEI 207 


In Africa the shock was felt with all its force. 
Carthage, which seemed at that time to lie safely out 
of reach of the barbarian, was crowded with refugees of 
the educated and ruling class, full of harrowing details 
of the horrors from which they had fled, loud in their 


denunciation of the religion by whose rising influence -* 


the disaster was to be explained. These complaints 
were not confined to the unthinking multitude. 
Thoughtful men detected in the very core of Christian . 
teaching principles incompatible with the maintenance 


of States. If the dominant religion forbids resistance - ~~ 


to evil, and bids us turn the cheek to the smiter, how 
can the barbarians fail to carry all before them? 
Rome grew great under the training of the old Religion: 
it has perished in Christian times. The distinguished 
official Volusianus, son of a Christian mother and the 
intimate friend of Augustine’s spiritual son Marcellinus, 
was kept back from the Christian faith by doubts of 
this kind, and it was from Augustine’s correspondence! 
with him that the conception of his work de Civitate 
Det originated. His original object was simply to - 
show that it was not the renunciation of the old gods 
that had ruined Rome, but that jon the contrary the 
Christian religion, if duly carr. | out, produced the 
best not only of soldiers, but_of husbands, sons, 
officials, debtors, creditors, citizeus, while the decay of 
Rome as appears from Sallust and other authors of 
the republican period had set in long before Christian 
times. But Augustine’s work expanded into a con- 
structive theory of history. He had long pondered 
over the problem of human history in the light of the 
1 Epp. 135-138 (see Aug. § 9). 





208 REGNUM DEI 


/ fundamental relations between man and GoD,—the 
\ two civitates had as early as the year 400 taken shape 


: 


{ 


< in his mind as the ultimate factors in the story of 


(mankind. He now works his account of the rise and 
* fall of Rome into a comprehensive survey of history, in 


' which the contrast between the czvitas Dez and the 


Tr 


civitas terrena furnishes the key to the significance of 
the whole. Augustine writes under the stimulus of a 
terrible actuality. The antique world was, in serious 
truth, breaking up to make way for a civilisation cast 
in new moulds and not to be born without long and 
terrible sufferings; and the fall of Rome was but 
the beginning of sorrows,—a symbol rather than an 
efficient cause of all that was coming. Lesser men felt 
that momentous changes were in progress. Augustine’s 
friend Qrosius at his suggestion wrote a history+ of the 
world in refutation of the heathen view of history; 
Salvian a generation later? brought the downfall of 
the degenerate Christian civilisation under the scheme 
of the Divine Governinent of the World. These efforts, 
especially the latter, are of interest and importance; 
but they are altogether dwarfed by the decisive work 
of Augustine. Th - de Czvitate was published at 
intervals, book by ok, as Augustine’s manifold 
engagements gave mm leisure to work at it. The 
22nd and last book ‘appeared in 427, fifteen years 
after the first lines of the work were penned. The 
work bears the traces of interruptions ; it would have 
gained by a compression which more continuous com- 


1 A.D. 417. 
2 A.D. 451, four years before the sack of Rome by Caiseric and his 
Vandals, } 


: 


THE CI VITAS DEF 209 


position would probably have secured for it. But 
Augustine put into it the very best that he had to give, 
and nothing that he ever wrote gives us a deeper 
insight into the manifold workings of his mind and 
soul. 

~ The first ten books are polemical, and directed tos! 
proving the inutility of the pagan religion of Rome, - 
both for the purposes of this world and of the world to 
come. In the remaining twelve books Augustine treats \f 
constructively of the two czvztates, in respect of their 
origin, their history, and their destiny. He interprets 
the whole history of the world as the product of these 
two fundamental factors. The czvitas terrena began'Y oe 
with the fall of the angels, and was continued by that * 
of man. Its course is traced through the descendants¥ 
of Cain, the tower of Babel, and the great Empires of 
Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome. The --° 
civitas Dei on the other hand began with Creation. Its¥ 
history is drawn out in the descendants of Seth, Noah, 
Abraham, and the choice and training of Israel, 
culminating in Christ. 

The two civitates represent diametrically opposite 
principles. The one is founded upon the love of GoD, y 
usque ad contemptum suz, the other upon the love of 
self, usque ad contemptum Det In other words the - :- 
civitas terrena is in principle the embodiment of evil; 
the kingdom of the devil? in contrast to that of Christ. 


1See de Civ. Dei, xv. xxvii. This is the ultimate moral distinction 
which divides angel from devil (de Gen. ad Lit. 1. xiii. 26). 

2 Enarr. in Psa. \xi, 6: ‘‘una ciuitas tamen et una ciuitas ; illa rege dia- 
bolo, ista rege Christo . . . omnes qui felicitatem terrenam Deo praeferunt, 
omnes qui sua quaerunt non quae Jesu Christi, ad unam illam civitatem 
pertinent quae dicitur Babylonia mystice et habet regem Diabolum.” 


14 


. 


© 
. 





210 REGNUM DEI 


\{ They differ in their inherent purpose. The cévitas 

\ Dez pursues the pax caelestis, while the czvitas terrena 
pursues merely the pax ¢errena.| But the latter is but 
a futile pursuit so long as the two czvétates are viewed 
strictly and apart. For the earthly civétas has no 
resources of its own commensurate with its purpose, - 

: ~ It can use worldly wisdom and worldly power, but has _ 
no command over the moral life. In a word it works 


"fits way by force or fraud. Apart from justice—which 


the earthly czvzfas can only possess by borrowing from 
Y the civitas Dei? the great Empires of the world have 
" been—nay the earthly Commonwealth, the State fer se, 
is simply—a great brigandage, grande latrocinium. So 
far, then, as the separation between the two cévétates is 
_absolute, and embodied in distinct societies? of men, 


the State is Babylon, the czvztas or reguum diabolt, the 
Church the czvitas Dez* So far, then, as the czvztas Dei 
corresponds to the rvegnum Dez,’ the reader of this treatise 
will infer that Augustine simply identifies the Church, 
over which the bishops keep watch, with the Kingdom 
of GOD, and the secular power with the kingdom of the 
devil. 

But this is far from doing justice to Augustine’s full 
complex of thought. We have already seen how pro- 
foundly his enthusiasm for the Catholic Church was 


1 de Civ. Dei, XIX. xiii, 2 Tbid. iv. iv. 

3 A civitas is defined as ‘‘a society of men,” de Czv. Dez, Xv. viii. 

4 See Enarr. in Psa. cxxvi. 3, where the ‘‘City” is the Church, which 
includes, indeed, all faithful, past, present, or to come, but its ‘‘ watch- 
men” are the bishops. That is, the hierarchically governed Church is céz, 
Dei. But this is only so in so far as individuals are built into Christ. The 
true Jerusalem is not a literal czvztas, but is ‘‘built asa city,” Anarr. in 
Psa. cxxi. 4 sqq. 

5 See preceding note, and p. 209, note 2. 


THE CIVITAS DEI 211 


coloured, or rather modified in principle, by his pre-\, 


destinarian convictions. The de Civitate was written” 


during the years in which the predestinarian idea was 
taking more and more complete possession of Augus- 
tine’s mind. As the argument proceeds, the contrast 
between the two civztates shows signs of merging inte 
that between e/ecti and reprobi} “But apart from this 


consideration, Augustine does not forget that the visible - 
Church is at most but the fragment of a kingdom, 


which embraces, not only the departed and the unborn, 
but the angels?) And it is not merely a fragment, 
but it exists in conditions which give it the external 
form of the civitas terrena® Again, while outside the 
civitas Dei no good can be said to exist, so that virtues 
themselves are but vices,* Augustine does not deny 


the possibility of individuals outside the Church” 


belonging to the civztas Dei, though no Soczety 
other than the Church can be allowed to share the 
name. 


But above all, it is impossible, in the face of history, .. 


to view the two ctvzfates as absolutely and visibly 


separate. As a matter of fact the two interpenetrate, 
as the elect and reprobate are commingled in civil asy 
well as in ecclesiastical societies. And not only so, - 


J 


the two civitates depend upon one another. On the one --- 


hand the czvztas Dez can secure no earthly good, not 


1 de Civ. Det, XX. ix. (supra, p. 171 sqq.); Retract. U1. xviii. : ‘‘ubicun- 
que iz his libris commemoraui ecclesiam non habentem maculam . . . non 
sic accipienu™ est quasi — sit, sed quae praeparatur ut sit.” 

2 de Civ. Dei, x1. Vu. : ‘‘sancta ciuitas in ss. angelis,” etc. 

3 He goes so far \/?d. XV. ii.) as to speak of the Jewish Church as 

«© pars quaedam terrena ~ ~*'S,” fashioned to foreshadow the heavenly 
civitas. 


4 de Civ. Dei, X1IX.xx ’., and supra, p. 199, note 3. 


212 REGNUM DEI 


the pax terrena, no- possessions or buildings of any kind, 
—in a word it lacks the means of taking shape as 
a visible Church—without the aid of the czvztas terrena. 
Lure regum possidentur possessiones ; the civil authority 
alone can confer property rights, the Church enjoys 
. them on the sufferance of the State,"—that is Augus- 
tine’s clear doctrine, diametrically opposite to that of 
Ambrose, as the circumstances under which Augustine 
fashioned his theory of property differed diametrically 
from the conditions at Milan a quarter of a century 
before. Practically, for all purposes not contrary to 
religion or morality, the Catholic must obey the law; 
the Donatist, indignant at the employment of civil 
force to confiscate his churches and property, must 
learn that the State may resume the rights which it 
alone has conferred ; the Catholic may be called upon to 
suffer the same thing; but he will recognise in it merely 
a trial of his faith. 

But still more important is the dependence on the 
other side. We have already noticed the inability of 
the czvitas terrena to effect its own end, the pax terrena, 


by its own resources, or without the aid of moral forces 


which only the czvitas Dei can supply. <A civitas is 
- defined by Augustine as concors hominum multitudo ;? 
and no such association is possible without mutual good- 
will, in fact without some degree of friendship or love? 


1 In Joh. Tra. vi. 25 sq.; see more fully Aug. § 15. Augustine in fis 
doctrine of property is the forerunner of Arnold, Francis of Assisi, ete. 
See Lect. VII. p. 324, etc. 


2 Ep. 155. 9. 
3 Caritas, or dilectio, or concordia; see de 7"), ~ e7, XIX., xiV., XV., XVil. 
Cf. Aristotle’s treatment of ¢iAla as the of justice in the main- 


tenance of society, Zth, Wzc, VIII. ix. | 





THE CIVITAS DEL 213 


But this again is impossible without justice. Withourny 


justice then, no society of men can hold together ; 


. 
~ 


the earthly civitas is only a civitas at all by virtue of ie 


some approximation, however slight, to the heavenly. 
As all things exist by participation in Gop, the only 
true Reality,! so every czvztas is such only in so far as it 
partakes to some degree of the cévitas Dei, which is 
the only czvzfas in the ultimate and real sense. Here 
Augustine’s transcendental idealism asserts itself; and 


here as elsewhere he ‘readily transfers-the~attributes 
proper t al-te—its—empirical- counterpart. The 


Cliurch, the ecclesiastical Society, takes the place of the 
civitas superna,» and becomes the only true czvtas? 
which exists on earth. The State, in so far as it is 
Christian,—z.e. in so far as it is other than a grande 


latrocinium,—merges, qua civitas, in the Church,‘ and -. 


the civil power becomes the weapon “of the Church, the 
legislator and the magistrate are but sons of the Church, 
bound to carry out the Church’s aims. Optatus, 
Augustine’s immediate predecessor in the Donatist 
controversy in Africa, had still occupied the old stand- 
point of the Apologists and of the Nicene age. The 
Church, he said, was “in the Emnire,”> ze. the Empire 


secured liberty and the cor A feitizens, for. 
is ae - ; 
Tn Joh. Tra. xxxix. 8,» 2 Cf. Serm. 214, II. 


. «ie moral drawn from the decay of Rome, Z/. 138. 16, 17; cf. 

de Civ. Det, X1X. xxi. 

4See Zp. 105. 5, 6. The power of the State is the ordinatissima 
potestas which ‘‘ Deus secundum suam prophetiam subdidit Christo” 
“et ideo hac Ecclesiae potestate utimur, quam ei Dominus et promisit et 
dedit.” 

>The Donatists had asked: ‘‘Quid est Imperatori cum ecclesia?” 
Optatus replies (de schism, Don. 11. iii.) : ‘‘non respublica est in ecclesia, 
sed ecclesia in republica, 7.e. in imperio Romano.” 


eel 


j 
f 


¥ 


¥ 
~ 


214 REGNUM DEI 





Churchmen, who in return were bound to show them- 
selves good citizens and obedient subjects: Huclesia 
in Imperio. Augustine reverses the relation, making 
_the Empire, in so far as it can be reclaimed from 
the vegnum diaboli, the instrument and vassal of the 
_Church: Jmperium in Ecclesia. In the contrast between 
this side! of Augustine’s philosophy of Church and 
Crown and the view of Church property alluded to 
Above, we have one more example of that unreconciled } 
antithesis between his practical Churchmanship and his 
religious Idealism which runs through the whole 
‘Augustine’s theory of the Church. But clearly the 
side we are now considering is the more significant in 


: 


~_ een 


4, 


respect of its immediate and continuous influence. 
) Here for the first time in history we are confronted I 
with the interpretation of the Kingdom of GOD on ; 
earth as an omnipotent Church, which so powerfully 
moulded the central ecclesiastical development of the 
medieval system, Here, it is hardly too much to say, 


ee 


we have in germ the Counter-Reformation) ‘theory of the , 
Church as a Societas Perfecta, an_institution equipped \ 
with all that is necessary. to a self-contained _body- 


politic, perfect nat indeed in the moral character, of its 
. members, but tion, institutions, and the 


1 Bp. 35. 3 (A.D. 396): ‘‘Dominus iugo suo zz gremio Ecclesiae toto 
orbe diffuso omnia terrena regna subiecit.” Augustine is, in this § 1 | 
similar passages, a disciple of Ambrose (Sevm. c. Auxent, 36, dnp sare j 
intra Ecclesiam, non super ecclesiam est). This line of thought is disparate a 
with that indicated sara, p. 212, note I (see context of passage there cited). 
Both, however, are suggested by the fanatical antagonism of the Donatists 
to any State interference with religion. Augustine replies—(1) the Church 
in any case depends on the law to protect its property rights ; (2) in the case 
of Christian emperors (cf. de Czv. Dez, v. xxiv.), the secular arm becomes 
the weapon of the Church (szra, note 4). 

2 See Lect. VII. p. 344, note 2. 


THE CIVITAS DEI 215 






divine right to everything necessary to the carrying © 
out of its temporal ends._| That this is in complete 
harmony with the deeper side of Augustine’s theory 

4 


of the Kingdom of Gop can hardly be on Lem 
_ that it brings the conception of the Chureh~into -co 

lision with imperishable Christian isstircts the Se 
hy experience of the Church ho. ye: plain. 
e But it is certain that Augustine to a large extent held 
. ' it and was prepared to apply it in practice. One con- 
cs spicuous instance of this application is in relation to ™ 
% the treatment of heretics and unbelievers. 

or - In his earlier days, Augustine held that the appeal ! 
"4 of the Church, spiritual in its nature, must be addressed 
to the spirit only, and must be restricted to the ' 
methods of persuasion by warning, entreaty, and arg 
ment. His personal experience had impresseg ‘upon j 
him the difficulty of the process by which han arriyes } 
at spiritual truth,? and the Fhe angry or ~ 
violent methods to force the process./Moreover the 
experience of the Church under perse¢tion had taught 
him that while persecution breaks th/feeble and half 
hearted, it nerves and braces thetonviction of the 
nobler spirits. But the opinion ¢ some of his co]- 
leagues, instances of coercion su€ssfully applied,— 
arguments of a purely opportunis haracter y—and the 
precedent of imperial legislati agaist Paganism, 
overbore his scruples. “I yield,’ he tells us; and 
once he had given way, he was a Not only to refute 

the Donatists by an effective apy! to their own Jaw. 


1“ Neminem ad unttatem Christi esse cd“; uerbo esse agendum, 
disputatione pugnandum, ratione uincendunP- 93. 17), 

2¢, Ep. Fund. 1-3. 

* Cf. Epp. 23. 7; 93- 5,175 185. 25; 


, 











ye. Il. V.; £}. 50. 


216 REGNUM DEI wa 


less violence in contrast to the ordinatissimae potestates * 
employed to put them down, but to bring the result, 
in which he had against his better judgment acquiesced, 
into relation with his theory of the Jmperium in Ecclesia. 
He yielded himself without further reserve to the 
panope S cogite intrare.” 

YIf then ( te from our consideration of 
Augustine’s theory of the Church all elements directly 
“traceable to his transcendental philosophy of religion, 
or again to his distinctive doctrines of grace and 
predestination, we are left with a conception of the 
visible Church, and of its relation to human society 
and government which is prophetic of the coming 
development.¢ That the medieval conception of the 
Kingdom of Gop as an omnipotent Church was con- 
sciousiY derived from Augustine, or was even due to 
any conscious analysis of the idea of the Kingdom of 
Gop itself, is true_only within very narrow limits.’ 
The process by which a conception of the Church, and 
of the Church’s relation to the State and Society, grew 
up, Was unconsCcous, determined not by theoretical but 
by_ practical conditions. In Augustine the organic, 
subconscious proess rises for a moment into conscious- 
ness. Here is Ks importance. [He registers for us 
the beginning of a process the full nature and destiny 
of which he coula not fully realise, a process which 
could only be emodied in fact in conditions which 


Augustine neitherknew nor foresaw,’ but which were | 


none the less eventhen on their way to fulfilment.| 


1 Supra, p. 213, note 

2 But see below on Grey vir. (Lect. VI. p. 252, note 1). 

8 Augustine’s view of tl general government of the Church, and the 
seat of sovereignty within ‘s fully discussed Aug. § 12. 






ST. AUGUSTINE AND KINGDOM OF GOD 217 


Vv 


To understand Augustine’s relation to the character- 
istic medieval idea of the Kingdom of GOD, we must, 
as I have said, for the moment eliminate from our 
survey certain elements of his many-sided_range of 
thought. These were in fact the very elements which 
were least deeply rooted in the minds of contemporary 
Churchmen, least congenial to the mind of the age 
that followed Augustine, and were in fact eliminated 
by it.? 

But to Augustine himself they were no unessential 
accidents which could be dropped without affecting his 
general religious position. They were on the contrary 
part_of_his innermost-cofe-of feliciows.certitude-~And 


jin- more ways than have been alluded to above 


/Augustine’s most inward convictions made it impos-} 


sible for him to reach a rounded-off and consistent 
theory of the Church and her authority. 7 That 
absolute Reality and Truth are in Gop alone, that 
Truth and Goodness are inseparable, that we can, even 


under Gop’s grace, possess Goodness and Truth only ¥ 


relatively, that absolute Truth is not within our grasp 
in this life, not until faith and knowledge are one in 
the vision of eternity, all this was Augustine’s habitual 
conviction. Infallible authority, then, belongs to the 
Church in that degree in which knowledge of Reality is 
possible to man: it is her ideal attribute, but the 
Church as known to us is but the visible shadow of the 
civitas superna. She has truth, trustworthy “for all 
Practical purposes, Catholica veritas, but never in the 
ie s Supra, pp. 193, 203. 


gi. 


218 REGNUM DEI 


sense that it is accessible to the bare-handed grasp of 


‘reason ;! never as w/timate truth. Credo ut intelligam 


is the ideal order, but is never adequately realisable in 
this life? Here the Church, collectively and in all her 
members, is and remains a seeker. Authority is, 
ideally, but the door through which the soul passes to 
the knowledge of GOD; practically we are all depend- 
ent on it, all “stulti”; the authority of the Catholic 
Church is, negatively and in contrast with other pre- 
tenders, to be followed and trusted. But_ positive 


efinalit it cannot e ] This is most prob- 
ry possess or c aim. is is mos Pp 


ably the eason sf why we “Took i in vain to Augustine for 
any indication | of an infallible, irreformable organ of 
Church authority. He discusses this “question “Ymore 
than once, or rather he is on the point of discussing it 
but never actually grasps it. Councils, he appears to 
hold, are the supreme organs of authority in matters of 
doctrine; occasionally he attaches high importance to 
their acceptance by the Apostolic See of Rome. But 
the decisions of councils can be: amended ; local by 
more general, these by ecumenical, “and of ee again 
earlier by later. This latter is precisely the point 
reached by Pope Julius 14 more than seventy years 
before Augustine; evidently Augustine knew, no more 
than Julius, any final organ of Church authority. But 
with Augustine, the liability of councils to indefinite 
revision can hardly be separated from the unreconciled 


1Cf. Aug. § 162. 

2 de util, Cred. 34. The ‘‘stulti” cannot complete the process, but 
must be content with authority. Only, ideally, they do not constitute the 
standard of Christian perfection. 

3 See Reuter, p. 350 and following, and his reff. 

4 See Lect. IV. p. 161, note 1. 





ST. AUGUSTINE AND KINGDOM OF GOD 219 


antithesis in his mind between faith and knowledge, 
the transcendent and the empirical. 

It need not then surprise us that Augustine, as has 
been remarked, bequeathed to the medieval Church 
three unsolved questions, all of vast importance, which 
were certain, with time, to demand a practical answer. 

Of the first question, the relation between the 
ecclesiastical and the predestinarian ideals of the 
Church, I have already said! what is necessary for 
my present purpose. The second question was a 
more external, but not less vital one. Augustine in 
the de Civitate.Det had dimly. but unmistakably 
outlined a new ideal of the Kingdom of GOD on earth, 
in which the Empire should take its place within the 


world. With the Church as then constituted, such an 


ideal could not be realised even approximately. For --~ 


it to become, not an unpractical dream but a living 
fact, the Church must be able to act promptly and 
habitually as a whole, it must possess a normal, a 
central, a supreme organ of authority, such as Augus- 
tine never even faintly conceived? To give effect to 
the ideas of the de Civitate Dei,—if only to put them 
to the test of practical application,—an episcopal federa- 
tion, working together only by conciliar action, was 


wholly powerless ; a papacy was needed, and Augustine; 


knew of none. What then,—this is the second great 

question which Augustine raised, but left it to posterity 

to settle—what is to be the constitution of the Catholic 

Church? Episcopal in Cyprian’s sense, conciliar in the 

sense of the Nicene age, or papal in the sense already 
1 Supra, pp. 194-205. 2 Supra, p. 216, note 3. 


a 


Nom, 


220 REGNUM DEI 





implied in many utterances and acts of Roman bishops, 
and presently to be still more vigorously formulated 
by Leo the Great?! The constitution of the Jocal 
Church, the Diocese, had been settled from time 
immemorial; the bishop was its head, the sacerdos in 
the unique sense. But during the hundred years of 
which Augustine’s life saw the close, the question had 
been forced upon the Church by terrible experience :— 
who is to judge when bishops are in conflict? Councils 
no doubt, but what if they also differ? is there no 
constitution for the Church Catholic_as a whole? or a 
constitution so incomplete as to provide no finality in 
the Church’s decisions, no authority to which, in the 
ultimate resort, all Christians are bidden to look? In 
a word, it was agreed that the Church is governed by 
an organised hierarchy of bishops, but the form of the 
hierarchy was a question for the future. Augustine, as 
we have seen, has no answer to this question; but an 
answer on a magnificent scale was preparing and was 
assured at least of trial, and in part of success. 

The third question seems one of lesser magnitude, 
but it is a vital one, and to some extent links together 
the other two. It is this: Have the spiritual censures, 
the excommunications, the reconciliations, of the Church 
an absolute, unconditional validity, or is there an appeal 
open from the judgment of man to the justice-ofGOD ? 
To us the question may seem to answer itself; but we 
must remember the terrible sternness of Augustine's 
“ view of heresy and schism,? the ruthlessness with which 
in some places he insists upon the obvious sense of the 


1 See Gore’s article on Leo in Dict. Chron. Biography. 
2 Reuter, p. 501. 


» 
’ 


ST. AUGUSTINE AND KINGDOM OF GOD 221 


axiom Extra ecclesiam nulla salus} the awful signifi- 
cance attached then and later to exclusion from the 
Church, as a “ binding on earth” which would not fail 
to be ratified in heaven. Yet how could Augustine, 
with his inward certainty of the lack of finality inherent 
in_all that takes place on earth, Augustine with his 
conception of the true Church as_ the “ numerus _prae- 
destinatorum,” refuse to allow that sometimes the re- 
probate might be absolved by the ecclesiastical tribunal, 
the elect condemned and excommunicated? He never 
expressly discusses the question in this form. But 
here and there he betrays some consciousness of it. 
There may be those, he says,.who are regularly,.but by. 
a miscarriage of justice, excluded_ from the _visible y= 
society-of the Church. “Such men the Father, who / “ 
seeth_in_secret, crowns in secret.”* If they accept 
their unjust sentence in a Christian spirit, and without 
stirring up schisms, they set an example to the rest of 
mankind. Such cases are, he continues, rare, but not 
unknown; in fact they are probably much commoner 
than might be supposed. 

To sum up, then, the complex question we have 
been discussing to-day: Augustine, in common with 
all who had gone before him, finds no adequate 
embodiment of the Kingdom of GoD short of the-.-. K 
world to come; the Kingdom of GoD is perfect, and--- 


1 Serm. ad Caesareensis ecclesiae plebem, cf. Aug. § 8c. 

* De vera relig. 11. This is faithfully reproduced in Quesnel’s theses 
(condemned in the Bull Unigenitus), 91, 92 : ‘‘ Excommunicationis iniustae 
metus nunquam debet nos impedire ab implendo debito nostro; nunquam 
eximus 4D ecviesia, etiam quando hominum nequitia uidemur ab ea a 
quando Deo, Iesu Christo, atque ipsi ecclesiae per caritatem affixi sumus,” 
etc. For other expressions of Augustine's view, see : Lip . 78. 4 3 de Serm. in 
Monte, xv iii, 62; see also below, p. 257, note 1.~~ 


Pa 


v 


Jf 


j 
; 


‘. which is in part shall be done away. On_ this funda- 


222 REGNUM DEI 





in its full reality is reserved for the eternity when that 


“mental _point he never wavered. But “for that great 
harvest the seed is being sown on earth, and shock f 
after shock of corn is being gathered in. There. is 
therefore an inchoate and imperfect, but still a/ true 
.- embodiment of the Kingdom of Christ on earth Tir. 


"this sense the Church is the Kingdom of Christ. The 


Church may be regarded in two ways, either as the 
external Society bound together by the sacraments, the 
correptio, and the hierarchy, or else as the sum total of 
those now on earth who are predestined to eternal life. 
It is the latter aspect of the Church, accordingly, that 


“alone satisfies_ the Augustinian identification of the 


Church with the Kingdom of Christ on “earth, \But 
Augustine is constantly passing from the ideal to the 
phenomenal, and he is constantly applying, ideally, to 
the externa communio of the Church conceptions derived 
from the consideration of the communto sanctorum, the 
unalterable number of the elect. Hence the visible 
hierarchically organised Church acquires in his thought f 
and language much of the ideal character of the King- 
dom of Gop. It was only required to slightly change 
the significance of the latter idea, to substitute for the 
Reign of the saints with Christ, for the Reign of Christ 
in the soul, the familiar thought of a kingdom in the 
sense of an organised government, to make Augustine’s 
doctrine of the Church the foundation for the ecclesias- 


_tical superstructure, raised by Gregory VII. and Innocent 


Ill., of an omnipotent hierarchy set over nziions and 
kingdoms, to pluck up and to bre*x down and to 
destroy, and to overthrow and to build and to plant. 


BPC LIER Be V1 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE MEDIEVAL 
THEOCRACY 


223 





Surely he sought thy praise—thy praise, for 
He might be wedded to the task so well ean 
As to forget awhile its proper end. a 


Quid est ergo Ecclesia nisi multitudo fidelium, uni 
orum? Hoc itaque nomen signat membra Christi parti 
Christi. 








LECTURE VW! 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE MEDIEVAL 
THEOCRACY 


See I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to 
root out and to pull down and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, 
and to plant.—JER. i. 10. 


WHEN St. Augustine points to the Kingdom of Gop 
as our chief good and as the goal of all endeavour, he 
is thinking of it as realised in the next world, as the 
Eternal Life which GoD has prepared for them that 
love him. In this, he is giving utterance to the 
common faith and hope of all Christians of all times, 
and marks no epoch in the history of Christian 
thought on the subject. \ But in the definition of the 
Kingdom of GOD on earth he stands at the beginning 
of a new historical development... His change of con- 
viction in this respect arose, as we have seen, from the 
felt necessity of a comprehensive religious interpreta- 
tion of the course taken by human affairs as a whole, 
in a word from the need of a religious philosophy of 
history! Such a philosophy of history, implicit rather 
than consciously argued out, the earlier Church had 
found in the old Realistic Eschatology, in the expecta- 
tion of the imminence of the second Advent with the 
1 Supra, Lect. I. p. 27 sq., III. p. 105, V. pp. 206-214. 
r5 





226 REGNUM DEI 


earthly reign of Christ in its train. But in the East, 
Origen had made this Eschatology impossible; in its 
place he had offered a subtle emanationist theory of the 
universe which the Church never accepted nor could 
accept. The Eastern Church accordingly was left 
‘without a philosophy of history, and remains without 
one to this day. The illusion of the Christian empire, 
fossilised in Byzantinism, was but a feeble substitute 
for the inspiring ideal of an earthly kingdom of Christ. 
But Augustine who, nearly two centuries after Origen, 
superseded Millenniarism in the West, replaced it by a 
profound historical idea which fertilised and ennobled 2 
the merely hierarchical interpretation of the Kingdom 
of GOD, and secured for it a long and fruitful influence 
in the life of nations as yet unborn. The de Czvitate 
Dez \ays the foundation for the characteristic medieval 
conception of the Kingdom of GOD, that of an omnipo- 


1 The Greek Church of to-day reproduces the Church of the Greek 
Fathers in the absence from its theology of any complete theory of the 
Church. (a) The Russian Church is the modern embodiment of Byzantin- 
ism, z.é. the original illusion of the Christian empire (sufra, Lect. IV. p. 
159) hardened down into the de facto supremacy of the emperor which 
dates in principle from Theodosius 1. (6) The Patriarchal theory, which 
is that of the Greek Church proper, erects into a constitutional principle of 
the Church what is merely a late and incidental result of history,—the 
superior eminence of certain particular Sees. This is not all loss. That 
“* the Church is in her structure not a State,” while ‘‘ the Church of Rome 
isa State and has aright toact as a State” (Khomiakoff in Birkbeck, Russa 
and the English Church, i. 7 sq.), is a far-reaching criticism, resting on a 
genuinely archaic conception of the Church. (Contrast the reff. in Gierke, 
Political Theories of the Middle Ages, notes 49, 51.) But the Roman Catholic 
conception, in contrast to the Greek, represents a principle (whether rightly 
or wrongly applied) which goes back to the teaching of Christ, and not 
merely to an incidental development of Church history. 

? John viil. (A.D. 872-882) set the precedent of dating documents issued 
during vacancies of the imperial throne ‘‘imperatore domino nostro Iesu 
Christo,” 


AUGUSTINE AND HIS SUCCESSORS © 227 


tent Church, Till that is realised,—until the Church 
can not only inspire, educate, and admonish, not only 
baptise and nourish with sacraments, nurse up and 
show forth to the world the Christian life, but can also 
control the actual legislation and administration of 
kingdoms, and enforce obedience to her laws and 
decisions, something is wanting to Augustine’s ideal 
of the civitas Dei} to the kingdom, the complete reign 
of GOD on earth. But the elaboration of this ideal as 
a working system took many ages; nearly twelve 
centuries had passed before its theoretical completion 
was achieved. 

The conception of the Kingdom of GOD as an 
omnipotent Church, in the form, indispensable to its 
practical effect, of papal absolutism, was in large 
measure realised in the Middle Ages, and it is still in 
theory maintained by the Roman Catholic Church.? 

In principle it was the legacy of St. Augustine. On 
the theology of the Church, both in its inherent 
character and in its relation to the civil Society, he 
said the last word for many ages to come. But he 
never considered the problem as a practical one, never 
analysed the means which were necessary if his theory 
was to take effect, above all, never conceived of its first 
indispensable prerequisite, namely, a central authority 


1 That is, as explained later on, to one side of it. See Reuter, August. 
Stud. 499, and Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, pp. 112, 
109. 

2 Pius Ix. on August 22, 1851, condemned the statement that ‘‘ doctrina 
comparantium Romanum Pontificem Principi libero et agenti in universa 
ecclesia, doctrina est quae medio aevo praevaluit” (.Sy//, Zrror., 1864, No. 
34). What is condemned is of course not the truism that the doctrine of 
papal absolutism prevailed in the Middle Ages, but the suggestion that it 
was merely medieval, 





228 REGNUM DEI 


capable of wielding the prerogatives of the czvétas 
Deis 

It was not, indeed, necessary that any such analysis 
should be made in theory; what was essential was that 
the Institution should take shape as an accomplished 
fact ; the need was not for Theology but for organisation. 

The dying eyes of Augustine were hardly closed 
when his native Africa ceased to be a Roman province, 
and passed into the hands of the Teutonic conqueror. 
The Roman times were passing away, the time of the 
new peoples had come. 

The circumstances of the earlier Middle Ages, the 
difficulty, in the face of untamed barbaric passion, of 
maintaining any right or enforcing any principle that 
could not appeal to force or fear, the decay almost all 
over the West, but especially in Italy under the 
Lombard conquest, of letters and learning, the increas- 
ing divergence and consequent controversies between 
the Latin and Greek Churches, all in different ways 
impelled the Western Church in one direction, that of 
closer organisation and reliance upon resources other 
than spiritual. Theology had outlived its constructive 
period, and was in fact hardly alive. The utmost of 
which it was capable was to preserve the heritage of 
dogma handed down from the constructive age;? to 


1 See above, Lect. V. pp. 216, 219. 

? The essay of Vincent of Lerins, on the criteria of Catholic truth, heralds 
in this tendency, which is also indicated by the new interest in heresiology 
(Augustine, Philaster, Praedestinatus), and in compendia of Church doctrine, 
e.g. Gennadius, de eccl. dogm. (about 500), Fulgentius, de fide (c. 510). See 
Seeberg, Dogmengesch. i. 327, n. Of Gregory 1. Harnack (DG. iii. 233) 
goes so far as to say: ‘* Gregor hat nirgendwo einen originellen Gedanken 
ausgesprochen ; er hat vielmehr iiberall den iiberlieferten Lehrbegriff con- 
servirt, aber depotenzirt,” etc, 


oor ne 


AUGUSTINE AND HIS SUCCESSORS 229 


the working out of the idea of the Church it devoted 
no attention. But practical urgency, and as time went 
on the growth of ecclesiastical Law,! were building up 
the system of the future: precedents which favoured 
the general process were carefully used up, in some 
cases were fabricated.* 

In Gregory the Great (590-604) we see the process 
of building up a central authority in a transition stage. 
Gregory takes for granted, certainly, the papal position 
as decisively formulated by Leo I. a century and a half 
before. He claims without misgiving to have inherited 
the custody of the universal Church committed to St. 
Peter, and to act as the ultimate judge of appeal in 
the concerns of all Churches, even of that of Con- 
stantinople, whose patriarchal rank he did not in 
theory recognise. But it must be noted that he 
claims no dogmatic authority. He professes his 
absolute homage to the four General Councils; on 
entering upon office he sends his confession of faith to 
the four patriarchs, including even Constantinople ; he 
recognises that the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch 
are, like himself, heirs of St. Peter, he protests that 
he would never make the sacrilegious claim to be 
“universal bishop.” To a patriarch who addressed 
him with this title, he replies that he is best honoured 
if honour is paid to all the Church, “honor meus est 


1 Rashdall, Universities of Europe, i. 232: ‘It was not by Theology so 
much as by Law—by her inheritance of those traditions of Imperial Juris- 
prudence which had subtly wound themselves round the common Faith of 
Europe—that Rome established her spiritual monarchy.” Cf. Bp. Stubbs’ 
Lecture On the Characteristic Differences between Medieval and Modern 
History, Lectures, ed. 3, p. 240, etc. 

? See below, p. 238, note 2. 


230 REGNUM DEI 





honor totius ecclesiae.”! The great blot upon his fame 
is his obtaining from the murderous usurper Phocas an 
edict recognising his supremacy, which the murdered 
emperor Maurice had refused. But apart from this, 
Gregory combined with the unflinching assertion of the 
papal claims as he had inherited them an exemplary 
personal modesty and charity. On the whole, his 
high personal character recovered for the Roman See 
the loss of prestige which it had suffered at the hands 
of the popes of Justinian’s reign, especially at those of 
the weak and unprincipled Vigilius. And not only 
so. The political necessity which had withdrawn the 
imperial viceroy of Italy to Ravenna left the Pope the 
only really important public functionary in Rome. 
Upon him fell the responsibility for warding off the 
Lombards from Rome, of negotiating peace first with 
the Lombard duke of Spoleto, then seven years later 
with King Agilulf himself, and Gregory not only won 
Spain, and England, and the dreaded Lombards them- 
selves to the Catholic Church and to the spiritual allegi- 
ance of Rome; but he laid the first foundations of that 
temporal power without which the spiritual empire of his 
See, and its position at the head of the medieval political 
system, could never have been securely founded. 

1 This dictum of Gregory, nobly used by him in disclaiming episcopal 
jurisdiction over all Christians, is rather cynically incorporated into the 
decree of the Vatican Council of 1870 as a reason for claiming it (c. ili.). 
But whereas Gregory means ‘‘if you would honour me, honour the 
Church,” his modern successor means ‘‘ if you would honour the Church, 
honour me.” On Gregory generally, see the article in Dict. Chr. Biog., 


one of the best of the masterly and judicial articles on Roman bishops 
from my friend Dr. Barmby (77 pace). See also his work in Wicene Lid, 
vols, Xii., xiii. 

* A very interesting anticipation of future development is the threat in a 
letter to an abbess of Gaul (Greg. M. ZZ. 9): ‘‘ Moreover, if any one, 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 231 


II 


(a) The four centuries and a half which separate 
Gregory the Great from Gregory the Seventh are of 
fundamental importance in the development now under 
review. They are collectively spoken of as the “dark 
ages,” and with reason. It is true they were never 
wholly dark. In the darkest age of all, which extends 
from Gregory I. to the reign of Charles the Great, the 
lamp of learning and study, quenched in Italy and in 
most parts of the Continent, was burning brightly in 
scattered monastic societies north of the Alps, nowhere 
more brightly than by the banks of the Wear and 
the Tyne in our own country, whence it passed to the 
coast of the great Frankish king.1 The Mahometan 
power, which swept away more than half of the Eastern 
empire poured over Africa and Spain and threatened 
to overpower Europe, was beaten back by Charles 
Martel in 732. And if the Church was intellectually 
weak, the great missions of the eighth century, the 
work of a Willibrord and a Boniface testify to her 
‘spiritual vitality. The papacy was active and re- 


spected, though in the hands of comparatively obscure | 


men. Honorius, Martin L, Leo IL, Gregory II. are not 
the peers of Leo or of Gregory the Great, yet they com- 


whether king, priest, judge . . . etc., let Am be deprived of the dignity,” 
etc. etc. But Gregory is rather momentarily forgetting the limits of his 
authority than formally asserting the later right to depose (see below, 
Pp. 232, 252, notes). 

1 Bede, A.D. 673-735 (at Wearmouth and Jarrow); Egbert, archbishop 
of York, 732-766; Alcuin, b. in Yorkshire about 735, 782-789 at Court of 
Charles, 796-804 abbot of Tours. Among his pupils Prudentius of Troyes, 
Ratramn of Corbie, Remigius of Lyons, Raban Maur (see Stubbs in Dict. 
Chr. Biogr. i. 74). 





232 REGNUM DEI 


pare favourably with the popes of the age of Justinian. 
But the age was a dark one, and political confusion 
weighed heavily on the intellectual life of the Church. 
“Qur countries,” writes a pope of the seventh century, 
“are incessantly harassed by the fury of divers nations ; 
there is nothing but battle, unrest, and rapine. In the 
midst of these barbarians our life is full of disquiet. 
We live by the labour of our hands, for by divers 
calamities the ancient possessions of our Churches have 
little by little been destroyed.”! “For more than three 
centuries,” to quote Dean Church, “it seems as if the 
world and human society had been hopelessly wrecked, 
without prospect or hope of escape.” ? 

But beneath all the misery and confusion the seeds 
of a new world were quick with life, and the new races 
were founding a civilisation higher and more enduring 
than that which they had destroyed. After the age 
of Charles the Great, with whom the reign of pure 
barbaric force is ended,’ the dark ages were never, not 
even in the dismal tenth century, quite so dark as they 
had been in the seventh and eighth. 

The light, which political disorder had quenched, 
was fanned to temporary splendour with the renewal 
of strong and organised rule. That Pope Zachary was 
appealed to by Pipin the Short to sanction the deposi- 
tion of Chilperic the last fazwéant king of the Franks,* 


1 Agatho to the Council of Constantinople under Constantine Pogonatus, 
A.D. 681. 

2 Beginning of the Middle Ages. 3 Oman, Zurope, 476-918. 

4 Eginhardt, ad ann. 749 (PL. civ. 373): ‘‘ Burchardus Wirziburegensis 
episcopus et Folradus presbiter capellanus missi sunt Roman ad Zachariam 
papam ut consulerent pontificem de causa regum.. . per quos prae- 
dictus Pontifex mandauzt melius esse illum uocari regem . . . dataque 
auctoritate sua zzssz¢ Pippinum regem constitui”; and ad azz. 750: ‘* Hoc 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 233 


that his successor Stephen 1.1 anointed Pipin and 
Charles as kings at St. Denis in 754, are facts more 
significant perhaps as omens of what was to come than 
as expressive of any then formally recognised authority 
of the Roman See to make or unmake kings. More 
important was the transaction by which Pipin, after 
finally putting down the Lombard supremacy in Italy, 
presented the territory, which the Lombards had 
wrested from the Greek emperor, to the successor of 
St. Peter.2 The possession of a formally recognised 
territorial sovereignty, for the present no doubt under 
the theoretical suzerainty of the Frankish crown, was a 
far more concrete thing than the “ uncrowned kingship ” 
of Gregory the Great. Coupled with the record— 
which now appeared for the first time—of the donation 
of Constantine,? it committed the Roman See to the 


anno secundum Rom. Pontificis sanctionem Pippinus rex Francorum 
appellatus est . . . Hildericus uero qui falso regis nomine fungebatur 
tonso capite in monasterium missus est.” This was a precedent appealed 
to from Gregory vil. onwards (Gierke, p. 116, n. 30; p. I17, n. 34). 

1See on the question of coronation at this period, Fisher, Medieval 
Empire, vol. i. p. 30sqq. It may be worth noting that the first hint we 
have of the coronation of kings by bishops is in the dream of Theodosius 
(Thdt. #. Z. v. vi.). The first pope to crown an emperor is supposed to 
have been John 1I., who on his visit to Constantinople (525), is said to have 
crowned Justin (for the second time). By the eighth century the emperors 
were always crowned by the Greek patriarchs ; the coronation referred to in 
the text is the first example of a pope crowning a German king. The next 
is the famous coronation of Christmas Day, 800. (Cheetham in Dzct. Chr. 
Antig. 466 ; see next page, note I.) 

2 Dict. Chr. Biogr. iv. 403 and reff. 

8 This is not the place to unravel the complicated strata of forgery which 
enter into the ‘‘ Donation.” The substratum of truth is that Constantine 
aided in the building and enrichment of churches both in Rome and else- 
where. The superstructure of error is that he (1) was healed of leprosy and 
baptised by Silvester, bishop of Rome ; and (2) in gratitude for this, granted 
to Silvester the Lateran Palace, sovereignty in Italy and the West, and the 
insignia of Empire. The forgery, which was accompanied by a personal 


234 REGNUM DEI 


principle of the temporal power, at first as a mere 
Church endowment, later on as the indispensable con- 
dition of effective spiritual dominion, and in the inev- 
itable result as an inalienable political right. 

The work of Charles the Great! marked an all- 
important epoch, both in the renewed Church-life of 
Western Europe and in the great question of the future, 
the function of the Church in relation to Government. 
The ecclesiastical and theological literature of the 
Caroline age is in compass, quality, and importance 
superior to any that appeared between the periods of 
the two great Gregories. But the immediate effect of 
the revival of the Western Empire was rather to retard 
than to further the building up of papal power. The 
illusion of the Christian empire momentarily reappears 
in Charles, the new Constantine—or rather the new 
David or Josiah.2 He had already, with the support of 
his clergy, and in the teeth of papal ratification, set 
aside the decision of the Greek council which made a 
dogma of iconolatry.2 His office, as he conceived it, 
was one of religious and moral, as well as political 
supremacy. True, Leo had placed on his head the 
imperial crown,—adding to the feebler precedent set 
letter to Pipin from the Apostle St. Peter, was designed to give the Dona- 
tion of Pipin the character of a restoration. (See G, Kriigerin 7heologische 
Literaturzettung, 1889, nn. 17, 18; Mirbt, Quellen zur Gesch. des 
Papstthums, No. 60; Duchesne, 276. Pontif. 1. ccxxxix. ; Dollinger, Papst- 
Jabein, and Papsttum, 28, 370; Richardson on Euseb. V. C., Nicene Lib. 
vol. i. p. 442; Dante, Zzf. xix. 115 sqq. 

1a.p. 768-814. Crowned emperor of Rome by Leo 1I., Christmas 
Day, 800. See Dollinger, Kazserthum Karls des Gr. in his Akad. Vortrdge, 
vol. iii. ; Fisher, Medieval Empire, chap. i. ; and Bryce, Holy Roman Empire. 
2 « David” was Charles’ name in the literary circle of Alcuin. 


3 On the Council of Frankfort and ZLzé7z Carolinz, see Moller, Kirchen- 
gesch, ii. 116; Milman, Zat. Christ, ili. 94-103. 





35 eee 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 235 


by Zachary all the pomp and symbolism of a world- 
historical ceremony. But no one in that age was ready 
to draw the deduction— 


Homo fit Papae sumit quo dante coronam.? 


The Pope had “adored,” in the sight of the as- 
sembled crowd in St. Peter’s, the Emperor whom he had 
crowned. He had renounced his allegiance to the 
distant Empress, to the distrusted throne of Byzantium, 
with no idea but that of transferring it to a Catholic 
and Western prince who had protected him against his 
foes and to whom he might look for protection for the 
future. Leo frankly accepted the position of a subject, 
Charles that of the head of Western Christendom, the 
supreme Lord of Rome, the guardian of popes and the 
guarantor of papal elections. Practically this meant 
a feudal government of the Church. The ordinary 
diocesan bishop was subject to the great metropolitans, 
who as prince-bishops were the vassals of the imperial 
throne. The relations of Pope and Emperor were 
tolerable and even cordial; but in changed conditions 
they might soon become intolerable. 

(6) And with the death of Charles, conditions rapidly 
changed. The confusion, in which the Carolingian empire 
soon lost its unity and its power to command respect, left 
the great Sees of the empire in a position of independence 
dangerous to the papacy, oppressive to their suffragans. 


1 See below, p. 259. Leo’s behaviour to Charles is that of a subject; 
Eginhardt, ad ann. 800: ‘‘Occurrit ei pridie Leo papa et Romani cum 
eo apud Nomentum, xii™° ab Urbe lapide, et summa eum humilitate 
summoque honore suscepit, prandensque cum eo ad Urbem praecessit” ; 
and ad ann. 801 : ‘‘post quas laudes” [z.e. post imperatoris salutationem] 
‘ab eodem pontifice more antiquorum patrum adoratus est” [Carolus]. 


236 REGNUM DEI 





To this state of things was directly due a momentous 
step toward the goal of papal autocracy, the forgery of 
the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. Composed in Gaul, 
possibly in the chapter of Le Mans, they were de- 
signed in the interest of the suffragan episcopate, who 
looked to Rome for protection against the metropolitans 
and the civil power. The main part of the forgery 
consisted of nearly a hundred papal decretals, of which 
fifty-nine were ascribed to popes from the apostolic 
age down to Siricius (385), who was the first Roman 
bishop to issue letters of this kind1 The forgery 
was momentous in its consequences,—not because it 
greatly extended the claims of the popes, but because 
it so completely imposed on an uncritical age, and 
because it bequeathed to the centuries which followed, 
centuries in which a growing importance was attached 
to legal precedent, a wholly false conception of the 
constitution of the earlier Church. It represented the 
popes from the days of the Apostles onward as doing 
what for four centuries they never had done,—as 
legislating for the universal Church by edict and 
rescript, in the manner of the popes of the ninth 


1 They grew out of the correspondence with foreign bishops who wrote to 
consult their most influential colleague. Siricius (see above, Lect. IV. 
Pp. 164, note 2) was the first to date his replies by the Consulate, after the 
style of an imperial rescript. The forger incorporated in the second of the 
three parts collections of genuine canons already in existence, é.g. in 
Dionysius Exiguus and in the Spanish Corpus. The latter fact, and the 
name ‘‘Tsidorus Mercator” which he assumes in the preface, suggested 
that the collection was the work of St. Isidore of Seville. He incorporates 
some existing forgeries, e.g. the letter of Clement to James, the comstztutio 
Silvestri, and the Donation of Constantine. But nearly all the early papal 
letters are of his own invention. See the monumental edition by Hin- 
schius (1863); Moller, Azrchengesch. ii. 149 sqq.; Dollinger, Papstthum, 
35-49, 375; 377. 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 237 


century. This was the most important thing which 
the Isidorian forgery effected ; it effectually stifled any 
attempt that might have been made to appeal to the 
constitution of the early Church, and it contributed 
powerfully to displace the old conciliar basis of canon 
law in favour of the principle of papal legislation, upon 
which medieval Canon Law substantially rests. 

The forgery is first heard (862) of in connexion 
with the appeal of Rothad, bishop of Soissons, against 
his deposition by the famous Hinkmar, archbishop of 
Reims. Into the details of the case there is no need 
to go. What is important is the part played by 
Pope Nicolas the Great in vindicating his right to set 
Hinkmar’s sentence aside. In reply to Hinkmar’s 
demurrer to the authority of the decretals alleged by 
Rothad, Nicolas rebukes him for refusing to be bound 
by decrees, preserved in the scrinza of the Apostolic 
See, which his predecessors in the papacy had sealed 
“with their rosy blood,” roseo cruore+ These words 
make it clear that the Forged Decretals are in question, 
for the few martyred popes? belong to the age previous 
to any genuine decretals. Nicolas therefore asserts 
that these, the False Decretals, were preserved in the 
scrinta of his See. Whether he had had the archives 
examined, and was speaking in contravention of ascer- 
tained fact, or merely assumed their genuineness 
without caring to verify his words, he cannot be 
cleared from a moral blunder of the gravest kind. 

1 Mansi, Conctl. xv. 694 sqq.; Hinschius, ccv. sqq.; Mirbt, Quellen, 
(ae eee (¢. 135), Pontianus (confessor, 235), Fabianus (250), 


Xystus (258) ; the last is one hundred and thirty years earlier than the first 
genuine decretal, 


238 REGNUM DEI 


The Decretals, then, were not a Roman forgery. They 
were fabricated neither at Rome nor by Rome nor 
for Rome. But they were with indecent eagerness 
greedily exploited by Rome; and for many centuries, 
from Nicolas himself down to St. Alfonso Liguori in the 
eighteenth century, they were the weapons of those 
who sought to maintain or increase the prerogatives 
of the papal throne. The papacy has made itself 
“an accessory after the fact.” We need not dwell too 
severely on the moral aspect of the question as affect- 
ing Nicolas personally. But as it affects the cause, 
the case is different. The papacy has been in GOD’s 
hands an instrument which has accomplished much for 
Christianity and for civilisation. But it cannot be 
acquitted of conscious fraud in many of the vitally 
necessary steps by which its power has been built up. 
The assertion by Nicolas of the genuineness of the 
False Decretals was but a link in a long series? of 


1 And Bishop Roskovany in the nineteenth. Quotations from them are 
still made by minor controversialists; I have seen one in a letter to the 
Guardian this year. 

? Of these we may mention: 1. The repeated attempts in the fifth 
century to pass off Sardican canons as Nicene (DC&., new ed. AUGUSTINE, 
§ 12 (c). 2. The false heading to the sixth canon of Nicea produced at 
Chalcedon. 3. The story of Lucius, king of Britain (Duchesne, 22}. Pont. 
1. ciii., sixth century). 4. The story of pope Marcellinus and the Council 
of Sinuessa (sixth century, Dollinger, Papstthum, p. 23, and Papst-fabeln). 
5. The Cyprianic forgeries (Rome, about 600; see von Hartel, Cypr. 
Opp. Il, xliil., and Benson, Cyprian, p. 527; the interpolations are still 
often quoted as genuine). 6. The Donation of Constantine (swzfra, p. 233, 
note 3). 7. The letter of St. Peter to Pipin (zd¢d.). 8. The False Decretals. 
This and No. 6 were of vast importance, and believed throughout the 
Middle Ages. 9. The collection of extracts from Greek Fathers, especially 
from Cyril of Alexandria, forged by a Dominican in the Levant, about 
1250. It was sent to Thomas Aquinas by Urban Iv. (formerly Latin 
patriarch of Jerusalem) about 1261, and was used by him as the basis of 
his work contra errores Graecorum, But Thomas (who used the forgery of 






7 
43 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 239 


falsifications which had begun in the tampering with 
the canons of Nicea more than four centuries before, 
and which continued until the fabric of which these 
frauds were the scaffolding was solidly established. 

But the leaven of the False Decretals worked slowly, 
and the period which immediately followed upon their 
appearance was one of retrogression rather than advance 
in the history of papal power. 

The period between Charles the Great and the Ottos 
marks a pause in the movement toward the medieval 
realisation of the civitas Det. If Boniface, the first 
transalpine bishop who had sworn fealty to Rome 
(722), had preached the papacy along with the 
Gospel to the German nations, and brought the whole 
Frankish Church into subjection to the pope; if 
Charles had unified the Western Church by com- 
prehending in the unity of an empire the Italian 
and the Germanic world; if Nicolas, by his complete 
rupture with the Greek Church, had got rid of every 
living tradition of the pre-papal constitution of the 
Church Catholic, and had thus cleared the way for 
the pseudo-Isidorian principles to work their way un- 
checked in the civil disorganisation left by the break-up 


course without suspecting its nature) had seen it before this, for a quotation 
from the false Cyril is used in his work on the Sentences, as well as in the 
catena aurea on Matt. xvi.; see Summ. Theol. Suppl. Q. 40, a. 6. This 
forgery, which gave Thomas a wholly false idea of the tradition of the 
Greek Fathers, occurred at the critical period when the constitution of the 
Church was becoming incorporated for the first time in the framework of 
Dogmatic Theology, and is perhaps the most glaring and momentous of all. 
(See Reusch in Zramsactions of the Royal Bavarian Academy, class 3, vol. 
xvili. 3, pp. 624~742, a full and apparently final investigation.) 

1 The story of this, which lies outside the scope of these Lectures, is 
worked out by Card. Hergenréther in his great work on Photius with 
admirable thoroughness and fair impartiality. 


240 REGNUM DEI 


of the empire of Charles,—yet the papacy lacked 
both the moral power and the material resources which 
were necessary if the result of all these various pro- 
cesses was to be gathered in. Moral power, above all, 
was conspicuously and increasingly wanting. At one 
time, indeed, it seemed as if, in spite of all the 
tendencies that set in the direction of a papacy, the 
crowning development would after all fail of effect.t 
In the night of the tenth century the candle of the 
Roman See all but went out. It was rekindled by the 
transalpine Church, and by the hand of its Imperial Chief. 

Nicolas had died in 867, and his successor Hadrian I. 
found his hand already weaker against opposing forces 
both in East and West—against the Macedonian 
emperor, against Lothair and Charles the Bald, and 
especially against Hinkmar. Then, as we follow the 
troubled pontificate of John VIII. (872-882), we feel in 
spite of ourselves that all the grandeur of Nicolas has 
slipped away” From the reign of Formosus (891) to 
that of Sergius III. the papacy is the prize of bloody 
faction-fights; each pope exhumes and insults the 
body of his predecessor, and reordains all clergy upon 
whom he had laid his sacrilegious hands. From 


1] would refer to the strong language of Gerbert, archbishop of Reims 
(afterward Pope Silvester 11.) in Patr. Lat, vol. cxxxvil., or in Havet, 
Lettres de Gerbert (983-997) ; see Moller, ii. 169 sq., and Milman, sie 
Christ. V. xiii. (vol. iii. pp. 338-345). 

2 Yet see above, p. 226, note 2, and Fisher, vol. ii. p. 137 (also i. 34). 

>See Hergenrother, Photius, vol. li. p. 321 sqq. ‘* Die Reordinationen 
der alten Kirche,” especially p. 352, (Stephen 111. and Constantine) p. 365, 
(Formosus, etc.) p. 369 sq. With every wish to minimise the anomalous 
facts, the cardinal candidly allows that ordinations were treated as null, 
and repeated ; and that the ‘‘ Augustinian” principles which clearly dis- 
tinguished invalidity from irregularity were first finally established by the 
theologians and canonists of the thirteenth century. 






5, tad 5 
ae: 
> 


Sergius (904) till John xi. (7963) the depth of 
degradation is lower still. This is the period of 
pornocracy; into its squalid details it is quite un- 
necessary to descend! The one strong man whose 
career and policy biné®the formless criminality of the 
time into an intelligible story is Alberic, count of 
Tusculum,? a typical Italian despot, who aimed at 
securing the prize of the high-priesthood as the heir- 
loom of his family. With all his vices, Alberic was a 
strong ruler, and where family ambition did not conflict 
with it, a promoter of religious work. He it was that 
invited the monastery of Cluny to establish on the 
Aventine their branch house of St. Mary, the future 
nursery of Hildebrand. But after his death in 954, 
his son Octavian succeeded him, and in the following 
year assumed the papal chair as John XII. (955— 
963). The character of John shocked even that age, 
accustomed as it was to unworthy popes. He lacked 
every element of Christian, even of clerical, character. 
But in his secular capacity he had redeeming qualities, 
Without honour or scruple, he was fearless, farseeing, 
and resourceful. His immediate object was the con- 
solidation of his feudal supremacy in Central Italy ; his 
dangerous rival was Berengar, whom an imperial settle- 
ment (952) had left with the title and power of king 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 241 


1 The main authority is Liutprand, Azfagodosis in Monum. Germ. Scr. v. 
See Loescher, Gesch. d. Mittleren Zeiten, etc. (1725); the general 
reader will find all that he can wish to know in Milman, Zaz, Christ. 
Book v. chap. xi. 

2 Ruler of Rome, A.D. 932-953. He was son of Marozia and of the 
Marquis Alberic, and collateral ancestor both of the consul Crescentius, 
son of the younger Theodora, whose family were Lords of Tibur (see for 
genealogical information Milman, vol. iii. pp. 319, 351; Tout, The Empire 
and the Papacy, p. 35) and of the great Roman family of Colonna, 

16 


242 ~ REGNUM DEI 


of Italy. Twice John appealed to the Saxon emperor 
for aid, and the second appeal brought Otto in person 
(961). 

The empire of Charles the Great had practically 
died out with Charles the Fat in 888. In Italy all 
was feudal chaos, in Germany first Arnulf (896), then 


Conrad (911) reigned as kings without the imperial | 


style. But the victories of the Saxon Henry the 
Fowler? over the Hungarians, Danes, and Slavs, showed 
that a man of imperial calibre was once more king of 
the East Franks and Saxons. His son Otto was 
crowned king at Aachen in 936, and after many an 
arduous and successful struggle for the consolidation, 
defence, and extension of his kingdom, he made his 
second appearance in Italy, to put down the pretender 
Berengar at the invitation of John xu. In 962 Otto 
was crowned Emperor at Rome. He is the true 
founder of the Holy Roman Empire, German in its 
seat of power, Roman in its consecration, its idea, its 
claim to Italian supremacy.” His coronation marks 
the religious significance of his imperial function. Pope 
and Emperor joined in a solemn oath: the Emperor 
was to protect the Pope, Rome to consecrate no pope 
without the Emperor’s approval, the civil government 
of Rome was to be supervised by Emperor and Pope 
jointly. To Otto, the settlement was of vital importance. 
His hold over Germany was rendered precarious by the 
power of the great feudal chiefs, who always tended, 
however carefully chosen in the first instance, to drift 


1 Henry was, through the female line, a descendent of Charles 1. 

2 Fisher, ii, 137 sqq.; Bryce, chap. xii. pp. 193-203. The title “holy” 
was first used by Barbarossa,—although it occurs frequently enough in the 
Notitia of the old Roman Empire. 





EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 243 


into hereditary antagonism to their overlord. To 
balance them there was the spiritual nobility, whose 
offices could never pass by heredity, and whose ranks 
the emperor could always hope to recruit by persons 
on whose loyalty he could depend. But to secure this, 
it was necessary to keep all the higher Church patronage 
in imperial hands, and to retain every possible check 
upon the great prince-bishops; and for this purpose 
the support of the Pope was all-important. Accord- 
ingly, while the Pope confirmed the new ecclesiastical 
organisation of Northern Germany, he received, but 
always as the liegeman of the emperor, the confirmation 
of his title to the States of the Church. Here then we 
have the second stage in the developing relations 
between pope and emperor; a Kingdom of GOD on 
earth founded upon a strict apportionment between the 
things of Caesar and the things of GoD. The Pope is 
absolutely supreme in things purely spiritual. But in 
things secular, in allrights of government and property, 
he is like the popes of the first Christian centuries, 
simply the subject of the Emperor. John already 
feared and hated the protector he had invoked, and 
in the midst of their negotiations was inciting the 
Huns, whom Otto had routed at the Lechfeld in 955, 
to call him northwards again by a new invasion. Otto 
detected his duplicity, and promptly summoned a synod 
which deposed the Pope and consecrated in his place 
Leo, Vill. archivist of the See. But Otto’s departure 

1 The Privilegium Ottonis forms a landmark in the series begun by that 
of Pipin in 754, and continued by those of Charles (774) and Lewis the 
Pious, 817. See Sickel, das Priv. Otto’s I. (1883). No pope can be 


consecrated before taking the oath of fealty to the emperor; the emperor 
confirms, and slightly enlarges, Pipin’s grant of territory. 


244 REGNUM DEI 


threw all into new confusion, and until the end of the 
century Rome was under the sway of the Crescentii, 
and the popes their miserable puppets. In 996 the 
Romans, weary of their tyranny, appeal to Otto IIL, 
who appoints, as Pope Gregory v., his cousin Bruno 
of Carinthia, the first of those German popes who mark 
the revival of the moral dignity of the See. Upon 
Gregory’s sudden death three years later, Gerbert 
succeeded as Silvester II. 

Gerbert was the most learned man, and in many 
ways the most interesting personality, of the day. 
Under Hugh Capet, as claimant of the See of Reims 
against Arnulf, he had protested boldly against papal 
claims. For the moment it seemed as if the learning of 
Northern Europe would rise in direct challenge against 
the whole ecclesiastical constitution of which John XII. 
was the living embodiment.?__ But the force of learning 
was then too weak, the need for a papacy too strong, to 
permit such a challenge to have lasting effect. Gerbert 
was deposed from the See of Reims by Gregory 
v., but Otto induced the Pope to pacify him with the 
archbishopric of Ravenna; and on succeeding to the 
papal throne Gerbert, like Aeneas Silvius many ages 
later, from the critic of papal claims became their 
warmest defender. But in four years he died, and 
once more (1003-1046) the papacy sank to its old 
degradation in the hands of the Crescentii. A climax 
was reached in the boy-pontificate of Benedict Ix. 
(1033-1046), whose vices were as gross but not as 


1See above, p. 241, note 2. The kindred houses of Alberic and of 
Crescentius divided the supreme power between them. Milman, v. xiv. 
? See above, p. 240, note 1, and reff. 





4 
‘ 
‘ 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 245 


heroic as those of Octavian. The Crescentii set up 
Silvester III. to supersede Benedict ; but the latter sells 
the papacy to Gregory vI., and then recovers it by 
force. The time for imperial interference had once 
more come, and this time the effect was lasting. 

In 1046 Henry 11. found three rival popes in the 
field;~ a council at Sutri deposed them all. The 
Constitution of Otto as to papal elections was renewed, 
and a German was set up as Clement UI! His brief 
reign, and the still briefer reign of his successor? 
Damasus II., paved the way for the decisive pontificate 
of LeoIx. This was the title chosen, upon his election 
in 1048, by Bruno, count of Egisheim and bishop of 
Toul. His pontificate is marked, like that of the last 
really great pope before him, by a decisive and this 
time a final rupture with Greek Christianity. If the 
papacy was to do its work the Church must be Latin, 
unencumbered by the traditions of a different cast of 
Churchmanship. Secondly, Leo brought from Cluny to 
Rome a man who was to be the counsellor of successive 
popes until he took up the succession as the greatest 
pope of them all—Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory vil. 

The half-century which now began was a period of 
incalculable importance for the consolidation of the 
medieval Church. The papal power rose suddenly from 
the depth of ignominy to its greatest moral height; 
from subjects, the Popes became the lords of Europe 
and arbiters over its kings and Emperors. 

Leo’s great object was the reform of the clergy. In 


1 Suitger of Bamberg; he crowned Henry on Christmas Day, 1046. 
2 Poppo of Brixen. On Leo 1x.’s breach with the Greek Church, see 
Mirbt, Que//en, No. 64. 





246 REGNUM DEI 


many respects they were secularised ; their offices were 
too often treated as personal possessions, bought and 
sold like other property, while the prevalence of clerical 
marriage assimilated them to the society in which they 
lived and worked. Such a clergy was, in the then state 
of the world; inevitably hampered in its power for purely 
spiritual good, while for the purposes of. a compact 
army to be employed by the papacy for enforcing its 
will upon nations and kings, it was worse than useless. 
The movement against simony and “ concubinatus,” ze. 
clerical marriage, into which Leo, with the powerful aid 
of Peter Damiani and the potent spiritual influence of 
the hermit St. Walbert of Vallombrosa, threw himself 
heart and soul, certainly enlisted the best religious 
minds of the age. Mainly it was directed against 
worldliness and laxity ; to some extent no doubt wheat 
was rooted up with the tares. Zeal for the holiness of 
the Church was mingled with zeal for its power: the 
two were not easy to separate. The story of Leo’s 
heroic efforts, of his repeated journeys to Gaul and 
Germany,' of his councils at Reims and Mainz, need 
not be told here. In Leo Ix. the papacy was once 
more respected as a spiritual force. His energy and 
growing influence were not viewed with equanimity by 
Henry I1I.;? but the need of checking the Normans in 
Italy drew the Pope away from the North before any 

1In 1049 he consecrated, at Cologne, the still famous Church of S. 
Maria im Kapitol. Milman compares him to ‘“‘an ecclesiastical Hercules 
who travelled about beating down the hydra-heads of clerical avarice and 
licentiousness.” 

2 A new Christian power had been created by the conversion of Hungary, 
under King Stephen (997-1038), who in the year 1000 received his crown 


from Silvester 11. This, according to Gregory VII. (eg. ii, 13), made 
Hungary a papal fief, 


EARLIER MIDDLE AGES 247 


serious breach occurred. In the teeth of the protest of 
Peter Damiani, Leo marched against the enemy at the 
head of an army (1053). A crushing defeat followed, 
the pope was imprisoned at Benevento, and allowed to 
return to Rome to die (1054). The tragedy was pro- 
phetic ; in the effort to realise the Kingdom of GOD as 
an ecclesiastical empire, the successor of Peter had 
taken the sword and perished by the sword. Of Leo’s 
three shortlived successors, the third, Nicolas I1., took 
two very important steps. In 1059 he cemented an 
alliance with the Normans, a distinct breach with 
imperial policy; and at Easter of the same year he 
constituted a new electoral college for the choice of 
the pope. This consisted of the bishops of the sub- 
urban Sees and the greater parochial clergy of Rome, 
those who were zucardinatt in the Roman Church. 
From henceforth the popes are the nominees, not of 
people or of emperors, but of the college of cardinals. 
Meanwhile, the battle against clerical marriage was 
carried on. It raged most fiercely at Milan, where 
earlier in the century the married Archbishop Heribert 
had triumphantly asserted the rights of his See, and 
ruthlessly put down the Paterini, a popular party of 
heretical origin, but enlisted by the party of reform as 


1Cf. Mirbt, Que//en, 65. Any church with a staff of clergy formed a 
centre (cardo) to which its staff were attached (z#cardinatz). Since about 
748 the suburban bishops were on the staff (incardinati) of the Roman 
Church. Pope Zachary writing to Pipin, mentions Aresbytert cardinales, 
z.é. clergy of towns, as distinct from country presbyters (ca. Weocaes. 13). 
The episcopal See became the cardo xar’ éfox7jv, and the cathedral clergy 
the cardinals. The term is already applied by pseudo - Isidore to the 
Roman, as distinct from other Sees, and Leo Ix. asserts that the clergy of 
the Roman See are especially entitled to the name cardinales. Their 
exclusive right to it was formally enacted by Pius v. (More details in 
Kreuzwald’s art. in Airchen-Lexicon, vol. ii.) 


248 REGNUM DEI 


a fierce mob on the monastic side in opposition to the 
wealth of the married secular hierarchy. The heads of 
this party, Anselm of Badagio, Ariald, and Landulf, 
fortified by successive papal commissions, of one of 
which Hildebrand was a member, overawed Heribert’s 
weaker successor Guido. A Roman council under 


Nicolas Il. in 1059 condemned clerical marriage, but — 


the bishops did not venture to promulgate the decree 
in Lombardy. Two years later Anselm, by the influ- 
ence of Hildebrand, was elected pope as Alexander II. 
An antipope, Honorius Il, appeared in Cadalous, 
bishop of Parma. For some time the issue of the 
struggle was doubtful. But the coup a’état in Germany, 
by which Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, seized the 
infant emperor Henry Iv., decided it in favour of 
Alexander. 


III 


(a) The new pope reigned under the direction of 
Hildebrand: the epigram of Peter Damiani expresses 
their real relation :— 


Tu facis hunc Dominum, te facit ille Deum. 


The pope’s partisans at Milan ruled in spite of the 
bishop, supported by the popular frenzy of the Paterini. 
But the introduction (Pentecost, 1066) of the Roman 
rite by Ariald led to a revolution. Ariald fled to Lago 
Maggiore, where he was killed by a niece of Guido. 
The latter was seized and imprisoned by Landulf’s 
brother Herlembald, who in turn was killed by a 
popular riot in 1075. But the force of resistance was 





ah in ie . j 
ee as ee Cre ee se sy. ee ee 


HILDEBRAND AND HIS IDEAL 249 


spent, and Milan became by the following century the 
firm ally of the papacy.! 

In 1073 Alexander died, and Hildebrand became 
pope as Gregory vil. In him, the influence of Cluny, 
which had long been a growing power in the Church, 
acquired its culminating strength. The reformed 
Benedictine abbey of Cluny, in what is now the de- 
partment of Saéne-et-Loire, had been founded in 910 
by Duke William of Aquitaine. Odo and Maiolus, the 
successors of Bruno its first abbot, had been in close 
relation with Otto I. and Otto 1. About 940 Alberic 
had brought Odo to Rome, and established him at St. 
Mary on the Aventine, which he made the head of the 
Roman monasteries. The influence of the order of 
Cluny was due to the clearness and tenacity with 
which they grasped their idea of Church Reform on 
the model of a well-governed monastery, z.e. by organ- 
isation in strict dependence on a single head. The 
zenith of their influence was in the first half of the 
eleventh century under abbots Odilo and Hugh. The 
Cluniac movement was but the chief of a number of 
movements of the kind in which the renewed vigour 
of Church life was making itself felt. In Italy there 
was, for example, the famous foundation of Camaldoli 
near Arrezzo, due to St. Romwald, of the family of the 
Traversari of Ravenna, which it is of interest to note 
furnished the order with its most illustrious and 
learned head in the critical times of Eugenius Iv. four 

1 For the connexion of the Hildebrandine movement with the question 
of the marriage of the clergy, and with the disturbances at Milan, see . 
Milman, Zat. Chr. vol. iii. pp. 432-479, who also describes the similar 


struggles elsewhere, ¢.g. at Florence between Bishop Peter and St. Wal- 
bert, ending in the triumph of the latter. 


250 REGNUM DEI 


centuries later. Of the Camaldolese movement Peter 
Damiani, the leader of clerical reform in Italy, was 
the child. 

Gregory VII. (1073-1085), a Tuscan of humble 
birth, was brought up in the Cluniac house of St. 
Mary on the Aventine. He was in the service of 
Gregory VI., whom he followed to Cologne upon his 
deposition. From that city he betook himself to 
Cluny, whence, as we have seen, Leo Ix. brought him 
back to Rome. His election? to the pontificate in- 
vested him with an office whose policy he had already 
practically directed for a quarter of a century. 

The dramatic vicissitudes of his reign cannot be 
told here as they deserve. He was the greatest of all 
medieval popes, and in his person the idea of papal 
absolutism finds its completest embodiment. To the 
purely spiritual claims of the papacy, as he had in- 
herited them from his predecessors, he made, with one 
exception of importance, no substantial addition. But 
he it was who first formulated the principle of the 
medieval papacy as the supreme governing power over 
all things and persons temporal as well as spiritual. 
His Cluniac training had filled him with the ideal of 
strict ecclesiastical obedience as the principle by which 
society was to be regenerated. Gregory was indeed no 
narrow ascetic; he lived and worked as a man among 
men, a man of affairs. But he was inspired through 
and through by the dualism which forms so marked an 
element in medieval religion, a dualism first applied to 


1 Born at Ravenna, abbot of Fonte Avellana, bishop of Ostia 1058- 
1062, died 1072. See Dante, Par. xxi. 121. 

2 It is noteworthy that, in spite of the settlement of Nicolas 11., he was 
elected by popular acclamation, 





-o 


a ‘ « - pe i * be 
SS ee ee Oe SP Oe ee Oe SS Se SL ee | ee. 


a 


HILDEBRAND AND HIS IDEAL 251 


political theory as we have seen in Augustine’s de 
Civitate Dez. Only whereas to Augustine the Church 
is the one divine Society, to Gregory it is the one 
divine Government. To Gregory as to Augustine the 
civil government is founded on mere force, is in its 
essence profane. Augustine ascribed the bond of justice, 
by which civil society holds together, to the inscrutable 
commingling of the two civitates in the complex web 
of human history. His conception of the czvztas Dez as 
consisting of the elect tempered his tendency to identify 
the antithesis between the two c7vitates as that between 
Church and Realm. But Gregory, whose interest was 
wholly that of the ecclesiastical statesman, conceived 
of the State as wholly secular, the Church as wholly 
sacred. The zustitca necessary to the well-being and 
coherence of the state must be imposed upon it by the 
legislative, judicial, and administrative action of the 
Church. But the Church at large, ze. the episcopate, 
was, as a matter of fact, honeycombed with secularity, 
dependent upon emperors and kings. This must be 
remedied by a clear separation between the Kingdom 
of GoD and the kingdoms of the world. To the former 
belong all persons, all offices, all possessions of the 
Church, which must accordingly be at the disposal of 
the Church’s supreme head. And not onlyso. Every 
Christian man, peasant, prince, or emperor, is a 
citizen or subject of this kingdom. All questions of 
rule and possession are moral questions, to be decided 
by the supreme arbiter of Christian duty. It is for the 
Church, by her supreme ruler, to award to each his 
rights, to undo and punish wrong. And so the pope 
holds the disposal, not only of ecclesiastical but of 


252 REGNUM DEI 


royal and imperial dignities. He alone can confirm 
the emperor in his throne, and for just cause he can 
also depose him.| 

So vast a power must be infallible in its exercise. 
Gregory lays it down that a papal decision can never 
be revised (vetractari) save by a pope himself, and 
that the Roman Church never has erred, nor, as 
Scripture witnesses, ever can err. This is no doubt a 
vague declaration as compared with later definitions of 
infallibility, but it marks a very distinct advance upon 
previous papal claims to doctrinal authority.” 

Gregory defined once for all the attitude of the 
papacy toward the civil power. Neither Alexander III. 
nor Innocent 111. nor Boniface VIII. added or could add 


1 The influence of Augustine on the writers of the age of Hildebrand is 
the subject of an excellent monograph by Reuter’s distinguished pupil, 
Mirbt, ae Stelling Augustin’s, etc. (1888). He shows that Augustine 
was very generally read and quoted. Gregory himself has only one formal 
quotation, but he adopts, without naming Aug., the whole theory of the 
grande latrocinium (Reg. viii. 21,—Mirbt, Quellen, 80e,—iv. 2, etc.), and 
treats Henry Iv. accordingly. On the other hand he also speaks with 
enthusiasm of the zpertum if joined with the sacerdotzum ‘*in unitate 
concordiae” (Reg. vii. 25 to William the Conqueror, and i. 19). He has 
absorbed, if not the letter, the entire spirit of Augustine’s idea of the 
zmperium in gremtio ecclesiae (see Reuter, Aug. Stud. p. 500). On 
Gregory’s claim to dispose of thrones, etc., see Gierke, Polit. Theories, 
notes 28, 30, 34, 131. On the Gregorian view of ecclesiastical property, 
persons, etc., as maintained by Becket, see Reuter, Gesch. Alexanders des 
III., i. 315-319. 

2 See Dict. Papae, 18 and 22 (Mirbt, Quel/en, 81). The Dectatus Papae are 
twenty-seven theses, apparently contemporary, and intended to sum up the 
main points of the very voluminous letters in Gregory’s Register. Pagi, ad 
ann. 1022, doubts their genuineness, but on very weak grounds. See Lupus 
of Ypres (1725), Sysodorum decreta, tom. y., and the more modern works 
referred to in Potthast,? vol. i. p. 377. The Dictatus are inserted at the 
end of the 55th letter of Book ii. ; they appear to stand in much the same 
relation to Gregory’s letters as does the Sy//abus errorum to those of Pius 
Ix. (see Newman’s Le¢ter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 78 sq. ; he speaks of 
the latter as an ‘“‘anonymous compilation,” etc.). 





HILDEBRAND AND HIS IDEAL 253 


anything in principle to the Gregorian system. In 
Gregory we have the famous appeals to the two great 
lights that GoD placed in the firmament, to the two 
swords in the hand of Peter, the spiritual sword to be 
wielded by his successors, the secular at their command. 

The collision between such claims and the civil 
authority was inevitable, even had Philip of France and 
Henry Iv. been other than they were. Battle was at 
once joined on the famous question of “ investitures.” 
The question was a vital one to Emperor and Pope 
alike. The prelates of the Church were feudal princes, 
and not only was ecclesiastical patronage a protection 
to the emperor or king against the dangerous power of 
the hereditary nobility, but the oath of vassalage, of 
which the investiture with ring and crozier was the 
symbol, was the necessary guarantee that the new 
spiritual lord would be faithful to his patron. On the 
other hand, the disposal of spiritual office by the 
secular power, the vassalage of spiritual persons to 
an other than spiritual lord, either threatened the 
independence of Christian teaching, worship, and life, or 
at any rate interposed between the supreme authority 
in the Church and the lives and actions of the Christian 
laity a passive, or even at times an active barrier, in the 
shape of a hierarchy dependent on the Throne or 
independent of the Pope. 

It appears to have been taken for granted on both 
sides that the secular dignity and possessions were 
inseparable from the spiritual office of abbey or See. 
The feudal system was firmly established in the 
Church, The question was simply whether the feudal 
headship of the Church was to rest with Pope or with 





254 REGNUM DEI 


Emperor. The right of possession was, by custom 
coeval with the Frankish monarchy, on the side of the 
Emperor. At the coronation of Henry II. the settle- 
ment had been renewed by oath of emperor and pope 
alike. But Gregory saw in the custom the badge of 
the Church’s servitude, the root of simony and of all 
the other flagrant abuses to the extirpation of which 
had devoted his life. Accordingly in his relentless 
crusade against all investiture by emperor or king he 
asserts the inalienable right of the Church, zure divino, 
to all Church property, and the principle that all such 
property stands at the disposal of the Church’s visible 
head.t 

(6) If Gregory is here giving organised effect to 
one side of Augustine’s thought, he is doing so at 
the expense of another. Augustine’s theory of pro- 
perty was not merely the outcome of his argument 
ad homines against the Donatists; it hangs together 
with that whole spiritual side of his idea of the Church 
for which Gregory had no receptivity. Gregory in 
his conflicts with Philip and Henry is unconsciously 
re-enacting, on a grander scale, the part, and develop- 
ing the principles, of Ambrose in his defence of the 
basilica of Milan against Justina? The Augustinian 


1 At the Roman Synod of 1075 he excommunicates all bishops and 
abbots who should receive their offices from laymen, and all emperors, 
kings, etc., who should give investiture. This opened the incurable 
breach with Henry Iv. On the question of investiture, the suggestive 
remarks of Hatch, Growth of Church Institutions, pp. 75, 76, and 200-207, 
should not be overlooked. 

2 See Ambr. Z/. xx. in PL. xvi. 994 sqq. Ambrose anticipates Gregory 
(p. toor): ‘* Veteri iure a sacerdotibus dozata imperia.” In contrast to 
Augustine’s theory of property, he tells the emperor (999): ‘‘ domum 
priuati nullo potes ture temerare,” etc. He maintains (e.g. 997): ‘*ea quae 
essent divina imperatoriae potestati non esse subiecta.” But he falls far 


HILDEBRAND AND HIS IDEAL 255 


principle “iure regum possidentur possessiones” cuts 
no less surely at the roots of the papal theory of civil 
society than Augustine’s doctrine of the communio 
sanctorum undercuts the theory of the Church de- 
veloped in parts of the de Czvitate, and in the Gregorian 
papacy as an institution. Gregory knew well, as the 
story of the Paterini at Milan shows, how to turn to 
account the popular hatred of a wealthy hierarchy. 
But while Arnold of Brescia saw in the wealth of the 
Church a departure from the principles of Christ, 
Gregory would condone it on the one condition, that 
it was held in sole strict subjection to the vicar of 
Christ. Had Gregory known, or attempted to apply 
to the problem of the age, the principle which 
Augustine had formulated against the Donatists; had 
he been content to wage a purely spiritual warfare 
with purely spiritual weapons; had he sharply dis- 
tinguished between the Church, as a spiritual society 
with the Pope as its spiritual head, and the accidents 
of temporal position or possession which come to it 
or leave it in the course of history; had he accepted 
the position of the earlier Church, able to bear without 
loss of dignity alike the injustice of a hostile and the 
patronage of a Christian empire, in a word had his 
policy been that of modern Liberal Catholicism, it is 
interesting to speculate upon the possible sequel. 
Such a policy could not have cost Gregory more 
suffering or humiliation than followed from the course 
short of Gregory’s general position. He allows the imperial right to tax 
the clergy, or even to confiscate anything except the churches (1017): ‘‘si 
tributum petit, non negamus, agri ecclesiae soluunt tributum ... non 


faciant de agris invidiam : tollant eos si libitum est imperatori ; non dono, 
sed non nego.” 


256 REGNUM DEI 





he actually pursued. He would have sacrificed the 
questionable triumph of Canossa, would have been 
spared the sack of Rome and the deathbed lament 
of Salerno. The papacy of the Middle Ages might 
have reigned less absolutely over the lives and souls 
of men; but possibly its rule would have been purer, 
more loved, more lasting. But Gregory could know 
little of the position of the early Church. To him and 
to his successors the donation of Constantine, and the ~ 
decretals, which after the long night of the tenth cen- 
tury wore the glamour of immemorial age, counterfeited 
_the true facts of history. Gregory claimed with a good 
conscience that the world should be ruled by the Church, 
the Church by the pope; and he was not afraid to push 
his premises to their legitimate conclusion, that of a 
claim to feudal supremacy over all the world. 

And in fact, given these premises, Gregory was 
absolutely right. If the Augustinian relation between 
the civitas Det and the civitas terrena is to be realised 
in the relation of the ecclesiastical to the civil organ- 
isation, and if the ecclesiastical organisation intended 
by our Lord is that of papal government,—and both 
of these doctrines were to Gregory self-evident axioms, 
—the temporal power, in its fullest extent, is of the 
Church’s divine right. And the falsity of premises 
and conclusion alike was far from obvious @ pvriorz. 
Ideas create institutions, and until experience had 
tested the idea of an omnipotent Church, it was im- 
possible for the immanent logic of the Christian con- 
sciousness to eliminate that idea from its supreme 
conception of the Kingdom of Gob. 

Gregory’s single-minded aim was that Christian 


HILDEBRAND AND HIS IDEAL 257 


ideas should rule the world. The Kingdom of Christ 
was to be manifested in the Kingdom of His Vicar. 
But to give effect to his aim, he could not dispense 
with the resources of an earthly prince: without the 
helping hand of Matilda of Tuscany, there would 
have been no Canossa. The Church as conceived 
by Gregory must be, to anticipate a formula of the 
ninteenth-century Jesuit canonists, a Soctetas Perfecta 
dependent, that is, on no other power for the com- 
plete resources and apparatus of government. But 
this committed Gregory, as his predecessors had 
already been committed, to the ordinary means by 
which earthly princes hold their own. Confronted 
by Force and Statecraft, Gregory played the game 
with vigour and skill. There was some gain in im- 
mediate power—the gain of Canossa—but the spiritual 
force of the Church was irreparably lowered. The 
censures of the Church, reserved in her early days 
for the gravest moral and spiritual offences, soon lost 
their salutary terrors? when excommunications be- 
came incidents in territorial squabbles, or were issued 
on the most trivial pretext; and when the unchristian 
penalty of the interdict sought to coerce the guilty 
by robbing the innocent of the privilege of Christian 
worship and even of burial itself. 


1 See Lect. VII. p. 344. On Matilda and her Donation, Sir J. Stephen, 
Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, p. 29 sqq. The Donation (1077) 
comprised ‘‘ Liguria” and Tuscany. Canossa was in Matilda’s dominions. 

2 See below on St. Louis of France, p. 271, note 1; on Augustine’s 
view, Lect. V. p. 220sq. In close conformity with Aug., Wenrich of 
Trier, a partisan of the emperor against Gregory VIJ., maintains that the 
author of an unjust excommunication merely excommunicates himself; so 
also Gregory’s rival Wibert of Ravenna (‘‘ Clement 111.”) and others (see 
Mirbt, die Ste//ung, etc. p. 101 sqq.). 


17 





258 REGNUM DEI 


With Gregory, then, the great struggle began be- 
tween Pope and Emperor. Its first phase ends in 
1122 with the Concordat of Worms, which registered 
the complete emancipation of the Church from the 
Empire! in spiritual things, the emperor abandoning 
the patronal rights, and investiture with ring and 
crozier, but retaining investiture with the sceptre, the 
symbol of the vega/za or temporalities, which, when exer- 
cised (as in Germany) before consecration amounted 
to a veto upon the election, that is, to no small voice 
in the appointment. The next and decisive phase, 
the subjection of the Empire to the Church, followed 
the fall of the Hohenstaufen, and was marked by the 
Council of Lyons (1274), when Gregory xX. received 
the submission of Rudolf of Swabia.2 After this, the 
empire becomes less and less important as a factor 
in the great question; the power of the papal system, 
before which the emperor could not but bow, is broken 
up by the new kingdoms. 

The penance of King Henry Il. of England was 
hardly less dramatic than that of Canossa eighty 
years before; but as a symbol of lasting papal victory, 
it was hollower still than Canossa. 

The penance of Canossa was a great symbolic act; 
but it shocked rather than impressed the conscience 
of the time. It represented an idea that was not, in 


1 Mirbt, Quzel/en, 83. Calixtus 11. waives the right of investiture with 
the sceptre, an abatement of the full Gregorian claim. But outside 
Germany this was to fo//ow consecration, and might easily sink to a mere 
formality. 

2 See below, p. 270. 

3 Gregory’s letter in Mirbt, 66a, For the other side, references supra, 
p- 257; note 2, 


COLLISION OF IDEALS 259 


the eleventh century, a reality. But the idea was 
alive, and was destined at any rate to approach 
realisation. It was the inspiration, after Gregory’s 
death, of the first Crusade, when Urban II. came 
forward at Clermont! as the leader of all Europe in 
the resolve to win back for Christ the Holy Places 
and to subdue the schismatic Greeks to Catholic 
Christendom.” 

On the whole, however, in the generation between 
the death of Gregory and the Concordat of Worms 
the Gregorian idea made little progress. But eleven 
years after the Concordat, the submission of Lothair 
at his coronation to Innocent II. as his feudal chief 
was ominous of the issue of the coming struggle in 
which the Papacy was to contend for the completion 
of Gregory’s aim,—not for emancipation from the 
emperors, but for the subjection of the emperors to 
itself? 


IV 


The twelfth century, the age of the Hohenstaufen 
and of Alexander III., has had no more than justice 
done to it as an epoch of intellectual and religious 


1The Council of Clermont opened Nov. 18, 1095. On Nov. 26 a 
speech by Urban 11. decided the assembly to embark on the first Crusade 
(1096-1099). 

2 On July 15, 1099, Godfrey de Bouillon took Jerusalem. 

® Lothair installed Innocent 11., elected by a minority of cardinals, but 
supported by St. Bernard, as pope, and received from him the territories 
of Matilda, for which, on his coronation in the Lateran Church (the rival 
pope holding St. Peter’s), he did homage to Innocent. This was the 
theme of the famous epigram :— 


Rex stetit ante fores, iurans prius Urbis honores 
Post homo fit Papae, sumit quo dante coronam. 





260 REGNUM DEI 


revival, and of creative political thought! To the 
stimulus of Abelard’s teaching we owe both the begin- 
ings of the Scholastic Theology, the intellectual glory 
of the medieval Church,? and the first of the many 
reactions which were evoked by the temporal power 
and wealth of popes and clergy. Arnold of Brescia is 
the first representative of the elements common to 
many of the most important anti-papal movements of 
the Middle Ages, the ideas of apostolic poverty, of the 
Church as a purely spiritual Society whose officers 
must be confined to purely spiritual functions, and of 
the tradition of republican and imperial Rome? Him- 
self a man of saintly and austere life, he preached first 
in his native Brescia where he was a canon, then for a 
time in Ziirich, lastly in Rome, against the lawfulness 
of worldly possessions for spiritual persons. He in- 
sisted sternly on the duty of the laity to provide them 
with all that was necessary for their maintenance, but 
with equal sternness condemned those who possessed 
more.t What attracted popular enthusiasm to Arnold 


1 The intellectual revival is strikingly characterised in the second chapter 
of Rashdall, Universities of Europe. Itwasalso the century of St. Bernard ; 
of the foundation of the Templars (1118), Cistercians (1098), Premonstraten- 
sians (1120), Knights of St. John (1099), the age of the Victorines, etc. 

2 Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris (1159-1164), pupil of Abelard and of 
Hugh of St. Victor, supplied the Middle Ages with the basis of scholastic 
teaching in his Lzérz Sententiarum, upon which some two hundred and 
fifty commentaries, including those of almost all the greater Schoolmen, 
were founded. 

3 See Gregorovius, Gesch. der Stadt Rom. iv. 452. His republican teach- 
ing merely voiced convictions which he found a living tradition at Rome ; 
but he also embodies the rising spirit of autonomous town life, fed by the 
renascence of studies, industry, and trade all over Europe. As an ascetic 
and Church reformer he had, as has been often noticed, much in common with 
his great opponent St. Bernard. See de Comsid. 11. vi. 10, ix. 18 ; IV. iii. 6. 

4 The imperialist author of the poem, de gests Frederici in Italia, treats 
Arnold simply as a criminal and heretic ; but in spite of himself he reveals 





COLLISION OF IDEALS 261 


was in part no doubt his appeal to the republican 
tradition which had never quite died out in Rome ; but 
his lofty idealism and unworldliness raised him above 
the level of a mere tribune of democracy.! His con- 
tention that the clergy should forego worldly wealth 
and political power, that their functions and powers 
were purely spiritual, struck a note which runs right 
through the Middle Ages, and is the answer of the 
medieval conscience to the Gregorian papal system.? 
To the Emperor, whom Arnold idealised as the prince 
elected by the citizens of Rome, and after him to the 
magistrates of the City, he assigned the exclusive control 


him as an idealist who lived and died with purest devotion, and moreover as 
wholly orthodox in doctrine. He carefully (‘‘nam multos nosse iuuabit ”) 
enumerates Amold’s ‘“‘ dogmata” (lines 768-801). They comprise strong 
censure of (a) the corruption of the clergy, including the pope, (4) the 
refusal of the laity to pay tithes, (c) the general prevalence of simony, (d@) 
also of usury ; (¢) the harmfulness of war, quarrelling, luxury, perjury, etc., 
(/) encouragement of litigation by the Curia, where ‘‘ quod precio careat 
despectum prorsus haberi,” lastly (g) he ‘‘ thought no one right but him- 
self,” was for cutting off sound and unsound alike “‘ ut fatuus medicus” :— 
“* Simonisque sequaces 
Omnes censebat ; uix paucos excipiebat.” 

With hardly an exception these are the ‘‘dogmata” of Bernard’s de 
Consideratione. If he also (783 sq.) maintained that no one should confess 
to, or receive sacraments from, simoniacal priests, he could appeal for this 
to excellent authority, papal and other. 

1 The description of Arnold by Walter Map, de Nug. curial., Dist. i. 24, 
would not be unfitly applied to the founder of the Friars Minors (see below, 
Lect. VII. p. 296). He says ‘‘the luxury of the cardinals shocked him : 
in epistulis coram domino papa reprehendit eos modeste, set moleste 
tulerunt,” etc. (Map was a friend of Alexander 1I., and was at the 
Lateran Council of 1179, twenty-four years after Amold’s death.) Gerhoh 
(to be quoted below, p. 262, note 2) will not assent to his ‘‘ praua doctrina, 
quae etsi se/o forte bono, sed minori scientia prolata est.” (But the poet 
calls him “‘ vir multe literature,” and Map ‘‘ secundum literas maximus.”) 

? The same ideas are forcibly expressed by Gerhoh, prior of Reichersperg 
near Passau, a fanatical but candid partisan of the popes. See the very 
interesting account of him in Fisher, ii. 113 sqq., especially p. 116 sq. 
For their persistence in the Middle Age, see Lect. VII. 





262 REGNUM DEI 


of the City and public life of Rome. The papal right to 
the States of the Church was condemned in principle. 

For some ten years Arnold was the leader of the 
Roman people, and the popes could only live in Rome 
by avoiding any conflict with the Republic. But Bar- 
barossa treated the Roman Republic with brusque 
contempt, and handed Arnold over to the Pope for 
execution. Had he had insight or foresight to perceive 
it, he was sacrificing what might have proved an in- 
valuable alliance in the struggle which was before him. 
Meanwhile the judicial murder shocked the Catholic 
conscience of Lombardy, Germany, and England.” 

Of the two questions of the coming age, namely, the 
relation of the temporal power of the Pope to the 
Christian and apostolic ideal of life, and the relation of 
the absolute supremacy of the Pope to the sovereign 
power of the State, the former was raised in its clearest 
terms by Arnold. The latter was to be fought out by 
the emperors of the house of Hohenstaufen. Of these, 


1Cf. Bryce, pp. 174 sq., 278. Gest. Fred. in Ital. 850, hints that this 
was realised by Frederick when too late :— 


“Set doluisse datur super hoc Rex sevo misertus.” 


2 Map has been sufficiently quoted. Gerhoh, de znvestig. Antichristi, 
I. xlii., wishes either that he had been punished less severely, or at any 
rate ‘that the Roman Church or Curia had not been responsible for his 
death” ; or if, as they allege, he was killed without their knowledge and 
consent, that his body had not been burned and thrown into the river 
(David, he says, set a better example on the death of Abner). Lastly, he 
will not seem to assent to his ‘‘nex perperam acta.” His only motive in 
writing thus is “his care for the honour of the Holy Roman Church.” 
According to the poet of Bergamo, quoted above, Arnold’s serene and 
prayerful end, his confession of his sins to Christ, and his silent commenda- 
tion of his soul to Gop, deeply impressed all present :— 

“‘lacrimas fudere uidentes, 
Lictores etiam, moti pietate parumper.” 


Both Gerhoh and Otto of Freisingen say that the dispersal of his remains 
was due to fear lest he should be venerated as a martyr. 





COLLISION OF IDEALS 263 


Frederick Barbarossa was the heroic figure. “ Hilde- 
brand himself,” it has been justly said, “had not a more 
lofty consciousness of his high purpose and divine 
mission to establish Gop’s Kingdom on earth.” 
Medieval imperialism, in its most ideal expression, is 
embodied in his character and policy. He represents 
the claim not of mere might, but of right based on the 
divine source of kingly office, the consecrated pre- 
cedents of the great Christian emperors, Constantine, 
Justinian, Charles the Great, the broad philosophical 
principle of government that “not man must rule, but 
Reason.” The laws of Roncaglia, inspired by the 
jurists of Bologna, are the last word of Christian Im- 
perialism in the contest between Emperor and Pope for 
the mastery of the Christian world? 


1 Tout, The Empire and the Papacy, p. 247. He adds: ‘‘ With all his 
faults, Frederick remains the noblest embodiment of medieval kingship, the 
most imposing, the most heroic, and the most brilliant of the long line of 
German princes who strove to realise the impracticable but glorious political 
ideal of the Middle Ages.” 

2 Arist. Eth. Nic. v. vi. 5: 5:0 odx eGuev Gpxew avOpwrov, adda Tov 
Néyor, Sri EauTG@ Toiro rote? Kal yiverat tUpayvoc. The same principle, Fo/. 
III. xvi. 5 (adding diérep dvev dpétewo voto 6 vouoor éorlvy), x. 5. But it 
must be allowed that at Roncaglia juristic theory trenched seriously upon 
existing rights. The actual collision was between imperial and papal 
absolutism rather than between personal government and constitutional 
liberties as such (cf. Bryce, pp. 175, 274; Fisher, ii. 160-163, 245-247, 
i, 150-152). 

5 The great Diet of the plains of Roncaglia, near Lodi, in 1158, is enthusi- 
astically described by the Bergamo poet (quoted above, p. 260 sq.), lines 
2597 sqq. Frederick summons :— 


‘*ex magno sapientes undique regno 
Quorum consilio leges ac iura reuoluens 
+ » nouam legem promulgat, ut omnes 
. . . federa pacis 
Perpetue teneant . . . nemo fera prelia temptet. 
Fraus, dolus, insidie procul absint, preda, rapine. 
Sic homines primi uixerunt temporis,” etc. etc. 





264 REGNUM DEI 


Frederick had to contend with two popes who were 
no unworthy successors of Hildebrand, the Englishman 
Adrian Iv., and Alexander ur. Adrian died while 
Frederick was at the height of his power, not many 
months after the Diet of Roncaglia. But he bequeathed 
an example anda policy which Alexander followed up 
with final success. The first seventeen years of Alex- 
ander’s reign are marked by the chequered fortunes of 
Frederick’s wars in Lombardy, the pope finding his 
principal support in the growing spirit of independence 
in the towns, a spirit which Adrian had been enabled 
by Frederick to put down in Rome itself. Gradually 
the Lombard league grew stronger, and at Legnano in 
1176 the “Carrossa” of Milan triumphed over the 
imperial chivalry, and brought Frederick to a new 
Canossa at Venice. The Roncaglian laws were with- 
drawn, and for good or evil the Christian empire 
passed into the realm of shattered ideals. In 1179 a 
council at the Lateran registered the resultt A vote 
of two-thirds of the cardinals was henceforth to con- 
stitute a valid papal election; the veto of the emperor 
was abolished, the ordinary clergy and the people of 
Rome were to have no voice in papal elections. 
Frederick to some extent recovered his lost ground in 
the remaining years of his life, but they may for the 
purpose of this Lecture be passed over. His death by 
drowning on his way to recover the Holy City from 


1 Frederick’s articles of peace with the pope at Venice in Mirbt, Que//en, 
No. 85; Decree on papal elections, z4¢d. 86. The archdeacon of Oxford, 
Walter Map (szpra, p. 261, note 1), tells us (Dist. i. 31), how, asked by the 
pope at the Lateran Council to deal with the poor preachers of Lyons, he 
succeeded in raising a laugh at their expense. His contempt for these 
mendicants contrasts curiously with his veneration for Arnold, 


' 


COLLISION OF IDEALS 265 


the Saracens is the tragic symbol of a noble life 
frustrated in its devotion to a noble if unrealisable 
ideal. 

The pontificate of Innocent III. (1198-1216) ranks 
as the culminating point of the medieval theocracy. 
Innocent hardly advances, indeed, upon the claim of 
Gregory the Seventh. The old Gregorian claims to 
direct emperors and kings and to dispose of their 
kingdoms, the old Gregorian appeals to the two great 
lights in the firmament, to Peter’s two swords, reappear 
in Innocent. But Innocent’s success in asserting them 
is far more conspicuous, and that in the face of altered 
and more difficult conditions. He was, indeed, the 
first pope who was master of Rome itself; but in the 
contest for universal sovereignty, he is confronted, not 
indeed like his predecessors with a strong emperor, 
but with the rising vigour of the new kingdoms of 
Europe; and he more than holds his own against 
them all. In France and, at least for a time, in 
England he is the advocate of right and morality, 
even when immediate political advantage is risked 
by his action.2 In Germany he decides between 


1 The Ghibelline idea (as contrasted with the spirit of the Ghibelline 
faction) is suggestively treated in the essay of Miss Rosina Antonelli, Z’zdea 
Guelfa e idea Ghibellina, etc. (Rome 1895; see especially pp. 28-30). 
On the names of Guelf (Welf—House of Altorf, dukes of Bavaria and then of 
Brunswick), and Ghibelline (House of Waiblingen and Hohenstaufen), and 
the transference of two Swabian territorial names to two Italian political 
parties, see the interesting passage in Fisher, i. 324-332, showing how 
“the old quarrel between Henry Iv. and the Saxons broadened out into 
the dynastic struggle between the Welf and the Wibelin, which was but 
one side of the larger contest between the papacy and the Hohenstaufen 
monarchy,” etc. 

? Philip Augustus had thrown over his second wife Ingeborg of Denmark, 
and married Agnes of Meran. The French bishops allowed the bigamy, 





266 REGNUM DEI 


rival claimants to the throne, and receives the humble 
submission of Otto the Guelfic pretender, whom a 
few years later he strikes with the ban of the 
Church.! Under him the Crusaders set up a Latin 
and Catholic empire in Constantinople, and Eng- 
land is made a fief of the Holy See But Innocent 
is no longer, as Gregory and Alexander had largely 
been, the supporter of popular liberties against arbitrary 
kings. His Bull against Magna Carta is but one 
symptom of the growing tendency of the Papacy to 
arouse the suspicion and resentment, not of kings but 
of peoples. From Gregory onwards, the greatest 
popes of the earlier Middle Age had sought political 
power as a means to spiritual power for the good 
of the Church and the salvation of souls; but they 
were not exempt from the operation of the general 
law that tends to elevate the means into an end. 
The popes were human, and their claim to super- 
human authority only made it impossible for them 
to recede from an inherently false position. And 
in Innocent the Great we see at least the be- 
ginnings of this fatal process. The year before his 


but Innocent, at great political risk, maintained the cause of Ingeborg till 
the death of Agnes gave him the opportunity of a compromise by the 
legitimation of the children of the lawful and the unlawful marriage alike. 
The story of Innocent and King John is too well known to need citation. 

1 Otto Iv. recognised against Philip of Swabia, March I, 1201, excom- 
municated 1209 (Mirbt, Qzel/en, 87 ; Fisher, i. 332, cf. ii. 1223 cf. Riezler, 
die Literarische Widersitcher der Papste zur Zeit Ludwigs des Bazers, 
p- 19, note. 

2 The Normans had replaced the Greek hierarchy of Southern Italy by a 
Latin one (1096), and had captured Thessalonica in 1185. On April 12, 
1204, Constantinople was carried and plundered by the Crusaders. 

3 In 1213. Innocent now supports John against all public liberties: his 
Bull against Magna Carta, 1215. 





COLLISION OF IDEALS 267 


death Innocent + presided at the great Lateran Coun- 
cil of 1215,? which stands forth as the most resolute 
attempt of the medieval Church to stamp out the 
abuses which had stung to moral enthusiasm the 
great popes of the Cluniac movement. After a cen- 
tury and a half of the Gregorian system, these 
abuses were still as prevalent as ever. Centralised 
government, from its inherent tendency to condone 
everything that brought power and resources to the 
central head, had failed to touch seriously evils which 
are more amenable to a power to which the papal 
system was steadily hostile, namely enlightened public 
opinion, especially lay opinion. The Lateran Council, 
by laying down the doctrine of transubstantiation as a 
dogma of the faith, by prescribing compulsory con- 
fession, and above all by establishing the Inquisition, 
and so repressing the sense of moral responsibility 
and stifling legitimate freedom of thought and speech, 


1 Innocent is believed to be the first pope who assumed the title ‘‘ Vicar 
of Christ,” a title reserved in the earlier Church for the Holy Spirit (supra, 
Lect. III. p. 100, note 1). Innocent’s predecessors were content to be 
Vicarii (2.2. successors) of Peter. In the donation of Constantine (755-7) 
Peter is wicarius of Christ, the pope of Peter. But I observe in a form of 
petition probably not later than A.D. 800 the words ‘‘ sedem quam regitis 
deitatis sorte vicarit” (Lib. Diurn., Sickel, p. 21,8). Innocent’s claim to 
tule ‘‘non solum uniuersam ecclesiam, sed etiam totum seculum,” in Mirbt, 
Quellen, 89. 

? Mirbt, Quel/en, 91-94. 

5 Even in Bernard’s time the practice of appealing to Rome had become 
subversive of all local discipline and justice in the Church. ‘* How long,” 
he asks the pope (dz Consid. 111. ii. 7, 8), ‘will you pretend not to hear, 
or fail to notice, the murmuring of all the earth? How long will you 
sleep, regardless of the great confusion and abuse of appeals. . . . Were 
not they once the terror of evil-doers? Whereas now they are used by 
them to intimidate even the good. This is not ‘the change of the right 
hand of the Most Highest.’ The victims of appeals, despairing of justice 
at Rome, prefer to suffer wrong, ‘ We should fail at Rome,’ they say, ‘we 
can do no worse at home.’” 





268 REGNUM DEI 


did more to stereotype the evils and abuses of the 
Church, than its direct legislation effected towards their 
removal. 

The long struggle between Frederick Il. and the two 
able popes Gregory Ix. and Innocent Iv. need not be 
followed in detail In part it turns upon the perplex- 
ing personality of the Emperor, in part upon factors 
which the earlier struggles of the popes and emperors 
have taught us to appreciate. So far as occasion was 
needed for the outburst of an antagonism rooted in the 
characters and position of the parties, it may be traced 
to Frederick’s breach of the twofold promise on the 
faith of which Innocent I. had sanctioned his taking 
up the German crown? (1210), namely that he would 


1 The reign of Frederick’s father, Henry Vi., was politically successful, but 
may be passed over here. He left his widow Constance of Sicily with the 
infant Frederick 11. who was made a ward of Innocent 111. The principal 
landmarks for our purpose are Frederick’s Sicilian laws of 1231, enacting 
the equality of all (even the clergy) before the law, etc., and Gregory’s 
publication of the Code of Decretals in 1234 (see below, p. 293, note 2). 
The two formulate a far-reaching contrast of principles of government. 

° Frederick emphatically repudiated the saying, of which Gregory 
accused him, de Tribus Lmpostoribus: this disclaimer we may, with the 
Catholic historian Dr. F. X. Funk (A?vchen-Lexicon, s.v.), and against 
the equally impartial Protestant authority of Reuter (Aufklarung im MA. 
li. 297), fully accept ; but his alleged scepticism, combined with his fierce 
intolerance of heretics, his Oriental court, his occasional reconciliations 
with the Church, his fits of mysticism, his final confession, make up if not 
a consistent, yet a perfectly credible whole. Our estimate of him may fall 
somewhere between the widely divergent judgments of Gregory Ix. and of 
Matthew Paris. 

5 The popes’ claim to hold the imperial power in commission during a 
vacancy, founded upon their claim to represent Christ on earth (cf. supra, 
p. 226, note 2), led naturally to the claim to award the crown in case of 
disputed elections, and so to Innocent’s claim to veto or ratify azzy election 
(Bryce, p. 217, note). Such cases furnished opportunities for the systematic 
exaction of some territorial concession as the gzzd vo quo (see the examples 
in Riezler, Lzterarische Widersicher der Papste, etc. p. 15, note 1). Cf. 
on the papal claims, Gierke, zt supra, p. 117, notes 30-33. 


COLLISION OF IDEALS 269 


take the Cross, and would never unite Sicily to Ger- 
many. But the former of the conditions was due, on 
Innocent’s part, to mixed motives; the conquest of 
Constantinople from the schismatic Greeks was insecure 
from the first ; but it was now an accomplished fact, and 
its retention was at least as precious to the popes as 
the possible reconquest of Jerusalem from the infidel. 
The other promise, that relating to Sicily, was simply 
due to the tenacity with which the popes clung to a 
feudal fief, and had no directly religious purpose at all. 
Frederick’s alienation from the papacy was therefore due 
to the increasing devotion of the popes to secular aims. 
His own exaggerated anti-clericalism, the reaction of 
one extreme against another, is most deplorable as a 
symptom of the coming break-up of the medieval 
ideals,—of the approach of the time when the highest 
moral aims would no longer unite the greatest leaders 
of men, but would drive them into opposing camps. 
So far as Frederick represents the new idea of the 
separation of Church and State, and so far as he enlists 
on his side movements! which herald the disintegration 
of the constructive ideas of the Middle Age, his reign 
already belongs to the subject of our next Lecture. 
With Fredrick’s death in 1250 the power of the 
House of Hohenstaufen is at an end,in 1268 the death 
of Conradin extinguished the line? The bestowal of 
the kingdom of Sicily by Clement Iv. upon Charles 


1 The followers of Joachim, speciaily numerous in the Franciscan order 
(Lect. VII. p. 297 sq.), were ardent admirers of Frederick, who knew how 
to use the appeal to evangelical poverty. 

2 But Manfred’s daughter Constance, wife of Peter 111. of Aragon (Dante, 
Purg. iii. 115), continued the descent : and the Vespers of 1282 led to the 
revival of an independent Sicily under a new Frederick. 


270 REGNUM DEI 





of Anjou! marks the new direction in which the popes 
are looking for political support. In 1274 Rudolf of 
Hapsburg recognises Charles of Anjou, surrenders all 
Italian pretensions, and renewing the oath of Otto Iv., 
subjects the imperial to the papal crown” The 
Empire is henceforth a German institution, in Italy its 
memory remains for a while as an unpractical dream, 
but Italy and Germany alike must exchange the 
imperial for the national ideal,—an ideal which it has 
taken six long centuries for either to realise. 


Vv 


Gregory X., who received the submission of the first 
Hapsburg emperor, was one of the best of medieval 
popes2 The Hildebrandine ideal seemed at last fully 
realised, and the long struggle to have ended in the 
final triumph of the sacerdotium over the vegnum. 
But in reality the empire had brought down the © 
papacy in its fall. The papacy remained the un- 
disputed sovereign power in spiritual things, but if it 
was to wield the temporal powers claimed by Gregory 


1 Tn 1265 Charles was brother, by blood though not in character, of St. 
Louis 1x. He held Sicily proper till 1282 (see last note). Urban Iv. (1261) 
was the first French pope ; of the remaining popes of the thirteenth century 
Clement Iv. and Martin Iv. (1281) werealso French. Clement, like Urban, 
was unable to live in Rome. 

2 See above, p. 266, note 1. This was at the Council of Lyons, in which 
Gregory also regulated future papal elections by the institution of the 
“* Conclave” (Mirbt, Qze/len, 97). 

3 With the rule-proving exception of Celestine of the gvaz rifiuto, he is the 
only medieval pope after Gregory VII. whom it has been found possible to 
canonise. D0llinger’s admiration for him (Pagstthum, p. 90) was originally 
due to Gregory’s supposed disapproval of the Inquisition (Lord Acton in 
Engl. Hist. Rev., Oct. 1890, p. 737). 


MEDIEVAL SYSTEM AND AUGUSTINE 271 


vil. and Innocent III., it must overcome a new and 
more formidable resistance, that of the nations of 
Europe with their new vernacular literature, the organ 
of a new power of independent thought; and this, it 
was already clear, it could never do. France under 
St. Louis, who while he was uniformly loyal and 
friendly to the popes, and supported Urban IV. against 
the cause of freedom and good government in England,! 
refused to recognise the deposition of Frederick IL. or 
to take political advantage of his struggles with the 
papacy, and opposed a firm front to papal taxation and 
other encroachments,? was now the first power in 
Europe. England, enfeebled by the troubles of the 
reign of Henry IlI., was soon to renew her strength 
under Edward 1, and the beginning of the English 
Parliament may be traced to the year 1265, the year 
after the death of the first French Pope? Spain and 
Portugal, moreover, in the course of the thirteenth 
century, had practically expelled the Mahometans, and 
become powerful Christian kingdoms. 

An important sign of the times appeared in the 
following year in the de Regimine Principum of Thomas 


1 Provisions of Oxford, 1258, denounced and their maintainers ex- 
communicated, 1264, by Urban iv. Louis supports Henry III. against the 
English (award of Amiens, 1264). 

* Louis’ prelates complained to him that ‘‘no one nowadays has any 
fear of excommunication.” They begged him to enforce the sentences of 
the Church by his bailiffs. The king expressed his willingness to do so, 7f 
they would give him cognisance of the sentence in order that he might decide 
as to its justice. This they refused as an infringement of ecclesiastical 
rights. Thereupon the king flatly refused to enforce their sentences, as 
“contrary to God’s will and to justice” (Joinville, chap. xv.), Martin 
(Hist. de France, iv. 308 sq.) claims that Louis thus established the root- 
principle of Gallicanism ‘‘!’appel comme d’abus.” 

8 First representation of the boroughs in Parliament of January 1265. 


272 REGNUM DEI 


Aquinas, the first attempt to formulate a new Catholic 
political philosophy with the aid of the Politics? of 
Aristotle. Full as the work is of wise and pious 
observations, it hardly sustains the reputation of the 
Angelic Doctor.? Its inconsistencies and confusion of 
thought may in part be due to its departure, as executed 
by the disciple, from the arrangement of the subject- 
matter as planned by the master. But the real difficulty 
was an incurable one, namely to satisfy the paramount 
necessity of justifying the universal monarchy and 
“plenitudo potestatis”+ claimed for the Pope while 
employing the political categories of the Po/étics, which 
proceed on the hypothesis that the citizens are the real 
rulers and the source of power in the State This at 
once precludes any application of the Aristotelian ideas 
to the Pope himself, who, now® that the priesthood is 


1 4,p, 1266. Thomas only finished Books 1. and II. i-iv. The rest 
was completed. before 1300 by his disciple and confessor Tolomeo da 
Lucca. 

2 His commentary on the Poltics belongs to about 1264; The Swmma 
contra Gentiles and contra errores Graecorum (supra, p. 238, note 2) were 
written in the pontificate of Urban Iv. (1261-1264), the great Szmma 
Theologiae between 1265 and 1271. Thomas died, aged 47, in 1274. 

3 That is in respect of constructive power, and accuracy in the definition 
of the leading terms employed. 

4 Thomas defines this elsewhere as possessed by the pope ‘‘ quasi rex in 
regno; episcopi vero assumuntur zz partem sollicitudinis quasi indices 
singulis civitatibus praepositi.” His conception of monarchy is that of 
absolute rule (see below), subject only to the superior control of the pope, 
Cf. Gierke, p. 144, n. 131, and p. 111, n. 17, 18. 

5 See Gierke, pp. 163, 165. Legislation belongs to the multitudo, or ¢o 
its representative, 2.€. to him “‘ qui totius multitudinis cuvam habet,” Summ. 
II. i. 90, art. 3. There is no idea conveyed here that would not equally 
apply to the position of the pope. 

® In the Old Testament priests were subject to kings. But the Christian 
priesthood is the vehicle of Joma cae/estia not, as then, of terrena. The 
proper relation was providentially prefigured by the subjection of the kings 
in Gaul (destined to be the most Christian of kingdoms), to the Druids ! 
(de Regim. 1, xiv.). 





MEDIEVAL SYSTEM AND AUGUSTINE 273 


the vehicle of heavenly dova, is supreme over kings, 
the ministers of earthly blessings! Aristotle, it is true, 
made /olztza the highest form of government; and this 
might be so for unfallen man.” But as things are, 
monarchy is best, and rebellion against the monarch 
unlawful. Even if he degenerates into a tyrant, he may 
not be murdered, but perhaps, in a very extreme case, 
deposed by his subjects.2 But the monarchy must be 
so “tempered” as to preclude the likelihood of such 
cases arising. This will be partly by papal guardian- 
ship, as above, partly by local self-government >—which 
distinguishes a “political” monarch from a_ despot.® 
But neither Thomas nor his continuator betray any 
appreciation of constitutional’ government. The king 
differs from the “political” ruler in being free from 
legal restrictions. He “carries the laws in his breast.” § 
The king is the soul of the kingdom, the papal power 
of the royal, as GOD is to the world.® Clearly the 


1 The argument that the Church, as pursuing the higher End, should 
control the State which pursues the lower, is the nerve of the whole curialist 
position. It hangs together with the metaphor of body and soul (Gierke, 
notes 76, 310, 311). 

2 Of whom (de Reg. Prin, 1. ix.) the “‘antiqui Romani” were an approxi- 
mate type ; but now, ‘“‘ perversi difficile corriguntur et stultorum infinitus 
est numerus” (Eccles. i. 15). Cf. Gierke, note 137. 

3 Like Tarquinius superbus (I. vi.). But tyrannicide (in spite of the 
example of Ehud) ‘‘apostolicae doctrinae non convenit.” See Gierke, 
note 130. 

4 de Reg. I. vi., 1, viii. 

5 See above, p. 272, note 4. ‘‘ Politia” is more suitable to cities, greater 
provinces belong to monarchs [who accordingly rule cities by the magis- 
trates as their subordinates], de Reg. II. ii. ; Gierke, notes, 165, 333. 

6 Jbid, 111, xx., IV. xvi. A “despot” is not a “tyrannus,” whose differ- 
entia is that he rules for hemse/f, not for the Glory of God (¢é7d, I. i.). 

7 See also above, p. 272, notes 4 and 5. 

8 ** Pectore defert,” Iv. i. Cf. Gierke, note 265. 

9 Supra, note 1; de Reg. Prin. 1. x. 


18 





274 REGNUM DEI 


influence of Greek politics is very slight here. The very 
terms of the Aristotelian political philosophy refuse to 
lend themselves to the curialist axioms from which the 
whole scheme, in its operative parts, is really deduced. 
In the century which followed, the material and 
moral power of the papacy declined. First the ill- 
success which attended the belated ambition and vio- 
lence of Boniface VIII! then the Babylonish Captivity 
and the subservience of the papacy to France, then the 
Great Schism, and the conciliar movement which ended 
the Schism, made it plain to all that the kingdoms of 
Christendom must depend for their well-being on the 
justice and strength of their laws, and not on the power 
claimed by popes to set them aside or to depose their 
kings. From this depression, the recovery of the 
fifteenth century partially raised the papacy, but the 
aspirations of Gregory and Innocent could never again 
be asserted with any prospect of success. The time 
of “Concordats” had begun, the period when “ most 
princes appear to regard the Church, and especially the 
Holy See, no longer as a mother and mistress, but 
rather as a distinct and rival political power, with which 
they were wont to enter into treaties in which they 
aimed at securing as much as possible for themselves, 
and conceding as little to the Church, in the shape of 
authority and advantage.”? If the Church is to be a 
“ Societas perfecta,” these are in fact the only alterna- 


1 See the Bull Unam Sanctam in Mirbt, Quellen, No. 98. The famous 
clause at the end, Porro subesse, etc., is anticipated by Thom. Ag. c¢. err. 
Graec. 68, where it is based on one of the forged quotations from Cyril 
Alex. 

?From de Smedt, Jwtroductio ad Hist. Ecclesiasticam (Gand, 1876), 


P- 53: 


MEDIEVAL SYSTEM AND AUGUSTINE 275 


tives; either what Gregory and Innocent desired, a 
supremacy virtually destructive of the sovereignty of 
kings and rulers, or a position such as is described in 
the above words; a position which can hardly be 
permanently tolerable without the possession of tem- 
poral sovereignty. 

The former alternative was tried in the two hundred 
years from Gregory VII. to Gregory x., the greatest 
and most characteristic centuries of the Middle Ages. 
Then, if ever, the Kingdom of GOD existed on earth in 
the form of an omnipotent Church. The period was, 
within the Church, one of comparative doctrinal 
unanimity ; the controversies that there were did not 
produce movements that affected the peace of the 
world. The one religious question that did so was 
that of the relation between the Civil Power on the one 
hand, and the Church, whose power was by universal 
consent centred in the hands of the Pope, on the 
other. As between Pope and Emperor, the question 
could have but one issue; the empire was too pre- 
carious, too artificial, too little identified with the 
growing power of the future, namely, national life, to 
enlist on its side any element that could permanently 
outweigh the terrors of the next world, which were 
always and for any purpose at the Pope’s command. 
Repeatedly and signally the Pope prevailed and the 
Emperor was abased. It is true, the victory was moral 
rather than substantial To have shaken off the 
imperial right of interference in papal elections, to 
have successfully asserted a papal right to interfere in 
imperial elections, were achievements whose importance 
depended upon the importance of the Empire itself. 





276 REGNUM DEI 


The contest for broader and more enduring principles” 
remained to be fought out with antagonists whom the 
decay of the empire only left the stronger. But what- 
ever success the Gregorian ideal has had in history, 
it achieved in the centuries in question. And that 
success must not be underrated. Whatever our estimate 
of the moral or religious character of the Middle Ages, 
there can be no question of their ecclesiastical char- 
acter, nor of the immense influence of the papacy in 
impressing the ecclesiastical stamp? upon the civil and 
social life of the time. Religious people will differ as 
to the spiritual value of ecclesiastical organisation, 
institutions, and interests, in themselves, and as to 
the degree to which they may wholesomely predom- 
inate in the individual or the common life. But without 
their ecclesiastical character the Middle Ages would 
have been a barbarous time indeed. The Church 
brought the discipline of character, the summons to 
that absolute self-effacement which alone raises man 
wholly above the brute, brought comfort to the suffer- 
ing,—and it was a time of suffering for the mass of 
men,—binding up of wounds to the penitent, terrors 
to the hardened and the tyrannical.” 

Louis IX., most typical product of medieval Chris- 
tianity, would do honour to any Christian age or 
country. It is no doubt to the Church, not to the 
papacy, that the credit of these and suchlike moral 
triumphs is due; but it may be questioned whether, at 
the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Church without 


1 See the beautiful passage in Bryce, Holy Roman Empire (ed. 4), chap. 
xxl. p. 373: ey. 

2“ Volentes malignari, nonne his potissimum terreri solebant?” Bern. 
de Consid, Ill. ii. 7. 


MEDIEVAL SYSTEM AND AUGUSTINE 277 


a papacy would have had the coherence necessary for 


her task, the power necessary to enforce elementary 


Christian duties, to make head against the numberless | 
petty tyrannies of feudal Europe. Thus much may be~ 
fairly claimed for the Gregorian system. But although 
the carrying out of that system was entrusted to a 
succession of popes of exceptional character and 
ability, men like Gregory VII. and Adrian Iv., Alex- 
ander III., and Innocent III. and Iv., Gregory Ix. and 
X., it never really succeeded; nor so far as it did 
succeed did it wholly further the spiritual good of 
mankind. When Gregory VII. began his career, the 
age of brute force had already at least begun to yield 
to the regenerating forces of morality, law, and religion. 
The attempt to enforce the temporal claims of the 
popes filled Italy and Germany with war and misery, 
set Guelf against Ghibelline, city against city It 
imposed upon the popes the position of a territorial 
sovereignty inconsistent with the example of the 
Apostles and with the spiritual character of Church 
and priesthood. This again drew the popes into terri- 
torial wars and intrigues, and into growing need of 
money. The Crusades were at first a movement of 
pure idealism, headed by the Pope as the spiritual 
leader of Europe; but eventually they were turned 
against Christians, and popes were known to spend on 
objects of their own moneys raised for Crusades against 
the infidel? Gregory had hoped, by the vigorous 

1 The curia was the den where Dante’s Wolf of Avarice had her securest 
home. ‘‘E molte gente fé gia viver grame” (/7/. i. 51). 

2? Compare Innocent II.’s crusade against the Albigenses, the wars 


against the Greek Church (sugva, p. 266, note 2), and many other cases. 
See also Lect. VII. p. 303, note 2. 


278 REGNUM DEI 





centralisation of power in his own hands, to cleanse the 
Church from simony and usury ; his successors merely 
succeeded in concentrating both evils at Rome The 
papal supremacy was employed above all as a means 
for extorting money. At the Council of Lyons in 
1245, Innocent Iv., bent on hurrying forward the 
deposition of Frederick II. and the succour of the 
tottering Latin empire at Constantinople, was obliged 
to listen sullenly while amid painful silence the English 
delegates to the council represented the disasters he 
was inflicting on their Church. “ We gave long since,” 
they said, “to our mother the Roman Church an 
honourable subsidy, namely, St. Peter’s pence. But 
she, not content with that, asked, by her legates and 
nuntios, for further help ; and that too we freely gave. 
You know, too, that our ancestors founded monasteries 
which they richly endowed, and to which they gave 
the patronage of many parish churches. But your 
predecessors, wishing to enrich the Italians, whose 
number has become excessive, gave to them these 
cures, of which they take no heed, neither in caring for 
the souls, nor in defence of the houses in whose 
patronage they are. They do no duty of hospitality 
nor of almsgiving, nor think of aught but to receive 
the revenues, and take them out of the kingdom, to the 
hurt of our kinsmen who ought to hold these livings 
and who would do the duty in person. Now to tell 
the truth these Italians draw from England more than 

1 Ivo of Chartres, in reply to the Legate, in Moller, Azrchengesch. ii. 
291; Durandus (1310), de modo consil. generalis celebrandi, pp. 69, 103 ; 


Bonaventura, Off. (ed. 1773) ii. 729, 755, 815; Dante, Parad. xii. 91—- 


94, and other contemporaries quoted by Déllinger, Pagstthum, 107-114 
and notes. 


MEDIEVAL SYSTEM AND AUGUSTINE 279 


60,000 silver marks a year, which is a larger revenue 
than that of the king himself. We hoped that at your 
promotion you would reform this abuse, but on the 
contrary our charges are increased.” After giving 
details of the most recent extortions they conclude, 
“we pray you promptly to remedy this: otherwise we 
could not any longer endure such vexations.” 

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the papacy 
had almost wholly on its side all that was good and 
true in the life and mind of Christendom. By the end 
of the thirteenth century this was far from being the 
case. The popes had, indeed, by judicious homage to 
an ideal of life in glaring contrast with their own 
practice, gained the support of the great movement of 
the Friars,! which did much to regenerate the medieval 
Church, and which secured to the support of the Church 
and papacy the ripest fruits of the new theological and 
speculative activity in the universities.2 But the signs 
of the times :—Arnold of Brescia, Frederick Barbarossa, 
the growing popular liberties of England, the parishes 
of England and Germany suffering spiritual neglect in 
order that Rome might be rich,—are so many reminders 
that the papacy is beginning to be a disruptive force, 
unable to hold together all the good that belongs to 
Christ as of right, a force that enlists on its side much 
moral and religious enthusiasm, but also repels much 
that is noble and good and true. 

The one supposed Christian duty in which an 

1 See Lect. VII. p. 295. 
® The first great Schoolmen of the thirteenth century were: Franciscans, 
Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Roger Bacon; and Dominicans, Albertus 


Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. See Little’s Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxf. 
Hist. Soc.), and Rashdall, Universities, i. 345 sqq. 


280 REGNUM DEI 


advance was made was that of persecuting Heretics. 
Before the end of the eleventh century, this was by 
no means frequent in the Church, though a few 
examples undoubtedly occur! But Innocent 1, who 
was the first to preach a crusade against the heretics, 
shed as much innocent blood as lies at the door of 
any human being? 

It is fairer, however, to award to individual popes 
the credit of the blessings, than to make them respon- 
sible for the evils, which attended their efforts to rule 
the world in Christ’s name. Of the benefits they were 
conscious, and for them they consciously worked ; the 
evils they either did not intend, or were not alive to the 
evil in them. 

The medieval papacy has achieved something for the 
Kingdom of GoD. But it claimed more than this, 
namely to de the Kingdom of GOD on earth, the 
Kingdom in which Christ reigned through His Vicar. 
If St. Augustine’s application to the antithesis of 
Church and Realm of the antithesis of the czvztas Det 
and civitas terrena, his conception of the Jmperium 
in gremio Ecclesiae was to be embodied in a working 
system of society, we must, I think, allow that in the 
medieval papacy the attempt was made in the only 


1 See Socrates, WH. Z. Vt. iii. : odx eiwhdc Sudkew 7H dpboddéw exxdAnola, 
and Augustine’s earlier and better view, szfra, p. 215, note 1. Lecky, 
Rationalism, ii. 30-33, does justice to the earlier medieval Church in this 
matter: he goes so far as to allow that before 1208 there was little or no 
persecution of heretics (p. 30, note 1 ; contrast Innocent vill. 267d. p. 28). 

2 One of his agents writes ; ‘‘ Nostri non parcentes ordini sexwz vel aetatt 
fere viginti miliia hominum in ore gladii peremerunt . . . spoliata est 
tota civitas” [Beziers] ‘“‘et succensa, ultione divina in eam mirabiliter 
saeviente” [!], Innoc. Z%. xii. 108 ; see Milman, Zat. Chr. 1X. viii. 

° Supra, p. 252, note 1, and Lect. V. p. 214. 






| 
: 
: 
| 


eel Bt Be Oe ae 


oe 


MEDIEVAL SYSTEM AND AUGUSTINE 281 


form in which success was probable, and that it 
succeeded so far as success was capable of attainment. 
But this success was gained at the sacrifice. of Augus- 
tine’s fundamental conception of the Kingdom of Gop 
on earth, at the cost of the inward and spiritual side of 
the Augustinian theory of the Church, which, however 
difficult in itself and to us, was very real to Augustine,} 
and prevented him from ever framing a completely 
externalised idea of the Church,—was gained by the 
aid of an ecclesiastical constitution of which Augustine 
had no knowledge nor anticipation, and_of a theory of 
property which Augustine directly repudiates” More 
than all this, it became manifest that the Church could 
only take up the position of a Society supreme over 
peoples and kings, could only assert the claim to be 
the only true czvzfas on earth, at the cost of assuming 
functions and employing methods directly in conflict 
with ks essential character and with the injunctions of 
her Master. “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lord- 
ship over them, and their great ones exercise authority - 
upon them; but ye shall not be so.” 

There are two alternative ideals of a Kingdom of 
Christ on earth and of the method of its realisation; 
Righteousness by means.of government, and govern- ) 
ment by means of Righteousness. The latter is the real 
and fundamental idea of Augustine; it_is that of St. 
Paul, and of Christ himself, There is room for™thé~ 
other, but in strict subordination to it. In the educa- 
tion of the young, in the infancy of a civilisation or of 
a Christendom, righteousness must come from without, 


1 Supra, Lect. V. pp. 194 sqq., 217. 
? Supra, p. 254, note 2, and Lect. V. p. 212, note I. 


—~ 





282 REGNUM DEI 


by means of government. But government must know 
its own limitations, and must realise the need for its 
gradual supersession, or rather transformation. Ex- 
ternal pressure, in the ideal healthy growth of indi- 
viduals and societies alike, must give place to the self- 
government which comes with maturing character. In 
Gop’s providence, with much apparent retrogression 
and conflict and disillusion, the history of modern 
Christendom has run and, as we may believe and hope, 
will continue to run, some such course as this. Each 
stage of the process has its characteristic dangers and 
mistakes. We do not despair of freedom because its 
progress is beset with licence and indiscipline, nor need 
the record of tyranny and corruption blind us to the 
indispensable service which external authority has done 


_in preparing us for the exercise of liberty. The papal 


monarchy in Christendom, like the Monarchy in Israel,! 
belonged to a necessary stage in the—divinely<erdered 
history of our.religion. In both cases its establishment 
was at once an advance and a decline; in neither case 
was it to remain for ever. But both alike served the 
will of God in their generation, and both alike have 
bequeathed for all time the ideal of a reign of Christ 
over? the unruly wills and affections of sinful but 
redeemed mankind. 


1 Supra, Lect. I. p. 14 sqq. 
2 Fourth Sunday after Easter, May 5. 


Pee hie VE 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE DIVERGENCE 
OF MODERN IDEALS 


283 






The old order changeth, yielding place to 
And Gop fulfils himself in many ways 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the 





H I ergo tu, et tibi usurpare aude aut dominans 
stolicus dominatum. Plane ab alterutro prohiber: 
an habere voles, perdes utrumque. 





LECTURE. Vil 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE DIVERGENCE OF 
MODERN IDEALS 


Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath.— 
JOHN xviii. 11. 
Peter said, Silver and gold have I none.—ACcTs iii. 6, 


THE three great powers which guided medieval life, 
the Priesthood, the Empire,! and the School, stand 
embodied in the names of three great men, who in 
their work and character gather up the idealism of 
each, and ennoble its very limitations. These are 
Gregory the Seventh, Frederick Barbarossa, and 
Thomas Aquinas. But greater than any one of these 
powers, greater than all three together, is that which, 
in the Providence of God, all alike served, and by 
whose progress the success or failure of all the powers 
ordained by GOD must in the last resort be tried. 
Academic thought is eventually proved in the life and 
thought of the working world, Governments exist for 
the citizens, the Priesthood for the building up of the 
Body of Christ. To complete our review of the ideals of 


1See Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, note 8, for Sacer- 
dotium, Imperium, and Studium. Regnum, when used instead of im- 
perium, denotes rather a vegnum particulare conceived either as under the 
empire (zézd. notes 334, 61); or as independent of it (337); in the former 
sense the emperor enjoyed the regnum of Germany by the mere fact of 
election, prior to his coronation as emperor (see below, p. 308, note 1). 
285 


286 REGNUM DEI 





the Middle Ages we must look to the layman, as citizen 
and Churchman. And the ideals upheld by the three 
great men whom I have named all meet in the name 
of Dante, the completest embodiment of the medieval 
spirit, in all its complexity and simplicity, its depth and 
strength, its poetry and its prose. 

(2) In Dante, then, we see the best thought of 
medieval Christendom, enriched with all the secular 
and religious culture of the crowning century of the 
Middle Age, inspired with the undimmed religious 
fervour of the “ages of faith,’ keenly observant of the 
stirring life of Christian Europe, reflecting upon the 
very same problem that had busied the mind of 
Augustine amid the wreck of a falling empire nine 
centuries before. The true nature, origin, sanction of 
secular government and of human society; the true 
function of the Church in relation to it; this is the 
theme common to Augustine’s de Civitate Det and the 
de Monarchia of Dante. Externally the two books are 
as unlike as possible; the length, variety, and loose dis- 
cursiveness of the older writer contrast sharply with the 
conciseness and scholastic technical precision of the 
other. But common to the two is the profound con- 
viction of the divine in history, and a substantially 
identical conception of the Church. That to Augustine 
the collective episcopate, to Dante the pope is the 
supreme power in the Church, is the accident of date. 
Dante has as complete a belief in the spiritual authority 
of the pope,? as Augustine has in that of the bishops ; 


1 This will verify itself to all readers of the Commedia. 

2 See the closing words of the de M/on.: ‘‘ Illa igitur reverentia utatur 
Caesar ad Petrum, qua primogenitus filius utatur ad patrem.” Though he 
held Boniface vi1I. to be no pope in the sight of Gop (Pav. xxvii. 23), he 


DANTE DE MONARCHIA 287 


his belief is in fact stronger because more sharply 
defined. The great difference between the two books 
is in the fact that the one suggests an ideal relation 
between the ecclesiastical and the civil society, which 
the other judges by its actual working. The de 
Monarchia is the outcome, not of the part which its 
author happened to take in the strife of Guelf and 
Ghibelline, but of an undercurrent of thought and 
feeling which had been gathering strength from the 
twelfth century onwards.! 

The de Monarchia is directed to prove the divine 
origin and sanction of the secular power, and its inde- 
pendence of the spiritual. At first sight the argument 
and interest of the book appear wholly relative to the 
time and conditions of its origin, so scholastic is the 
method, so artificial many of the proofs, so bound up 
is the whole with the assumed eternity of Rome and of 
the Roman Empire. But to see no further than this 
relativity would be to view very superficially a product 
of profound thought. 
reprobates the outrage of Anagni as an insult to Christ in His (de facto) 
Vicar, Purg. xx. 87 sqq. :— 


Veggio in Alagna entrar lo fiordaliso 

E nel Vicario suo Cristo esser catto ; 
. . . Veggio rinnovelar l’aceto e il fele 

E tra nuovi ladroni essere anciso . . 


And compare his eloquent praise of St. Dominic :— 
Benigno a’suoi ed a nzmict crudo. 


Par. xi., xii. The above are only a few of many possible illustrations, 

1 According to Witte, in his standard Edition (Vienna, 1874), the de 
Monarchia was written before Dante had reached his ‘‘ mid-term ” of life, 
before he had tasted Office or Exile, and before the Bull Unam Sanctam. 
This view is considered highly improbable by Mr. Butler, Dr. Moore, and 
other high authorities, who generally connect it with the advent of Henry 
of Luxemburg (7z/ra, p. 295). 





288 REGNUM DEI 


What Dante has in mind is not the rule of One 
as an end in itself or as a personal right, but the 
end or purpose of Society, as he has learned it from 
Aristotle’s Politics, with which the thought of the book 
is saturated. That all mankind should, to secure this 
end in the highest perfection, be united under a single 
political head, is a thought which may be set down 
to the relativity of the book; but it enshrines the two- 
fold principle of undivided sovereign power, and of 
some supreme arbiter of justice and right, higher than 
any merely national institution, founded in the nature 
of things, to which all rulers alike must bow. We can 
thus disengage from the temporary form of Dante’s 
thought a permanent principle, which Aristotle, his 
master in political thought, had formulated in the 
words, “ We allow not man to govern, but the Law.” 
“So far as we can form any clear idea of progress, 
does it not consist in the advancing prevalence and 
recognition of some such authority?” ? 

Augustine, in contrasting the goal of the two 
civitates, namely the peace of heaven and the peace of 
earth, struck a note of dualism which finds an echo in 
the medieval view of life. This dualism leads to the 
disparagement, as profane and tainted with associations 
of sin, of all that properly falls within the purview of 
secular government, unless brought into subservience 
to the spiritual power. The notion of the earthly 
commonwealth as a grande latrocinium is not far 
below the surface in the utterances of Hildebrand ; 
here and there he comes very near to quoting it ex- 


1 See above, p. 263, note 2. 
* Bishop Paget in Ze Guardian, March 21, 1g00. 


DANTE DE MONARCHIA 289 


pressly.1 The same idea inspires the simile of the two 
great lights. The zmperium has no light of its own, but 
all is borrowed from the sacerdotium. Augustine him- 
self did not consistently adhere to this dualism; he 
allows that no earthly czvztas can attain earthly peace 
without justice, that is, without partaking to some 
degree in the qualities of the heavenly. Dante gets 
rid of it entirely, and it is here that the de Monarchia 
marks an epoch in Christian political thought. Taught 
by Aristotle, he sees in the czvzfas a moral as well as a 
material aim “ bene sufficienterque vivere.” What does 
this imply? Human society as a whole has a special 
“ operation” or purpose of its own, which includes and 
transcends that of each particular unit composing it. 
This, the function of apprehension by the zntellectus 
possibilis, the intellectual capacity or “virtue,” is dis- 
tinctive of man as compared with the animals below 
him or the angels above him. This cannot be wholly 
realised in “act” 
particular community; its adequate realisation de- 
mands the participation of mankind as a whole This 
realisation, speculative in itself, becomes, “ by a certain 
extension,” practical in the moral and political sphere 


by the individual, nor by any 


as well as in that of production and art. The proper 
work of mankind, then, is ever to realise the whole 
potency of the ztellectus possibilis, primarily in thought, 
derivatively in action. And for this “almost divine” 
purpose (Ps. viii. 6), tranquillity and peace are essential. 
So that peace is the proximate end of human govern- 
ment; not a merely terrestrial peace, but a peace 
1 Gierke, Political Theories, etc., note 16. 


® De Monarch. 1. iti. 45 sqq. (Witte) ; cf, Gierke, p. 9 and note 3. 
19 


290 REGNUM DEI 





which comprises the blessings of the heaven above 
and the earth beneath! “Whence it is manifest 
that universal peace is the best of those things which 
are ordered to our happiness. Hence it is that the 
shepherds heard from on high not of wealth, nor of 
pleasures, nor of honours, nor long life, nor health, nor 
strength, nor beauty, but of Peace. For the heavenly 
host proclaims, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on 
earth peace to men of goodwill”” Hence, too, the 
Saviour of men gave as his greeting, “ Peace be with 
you.” Accordingly the authority of the monarch, 
which is necessary to the peace of human society, 
depends not upon any other man, or vicar of Christ, 
but directly upon God Himself. In spiritual things, he 
will recognise the Pope as his Father; to the Pope 
“ we owe, not whatever we owe to Christ, but whatever 
we owe to Peter.” Christ refused, as the exemplar of 
his Church, the charge of earthly monarchy; and if 
the Church undertakes it or claims it, she contravenes 
her essential nature. “So, then, it is clear that 
the authority of temporal monarchy comes down to 
it immediately from the fountain-head of universal 
authority. This fountain-head, united in the citadel of 
its oneness, flows out into many channels from the 
overflowing of goodness.” “ By this conception, human 
society is reconsecrated, as that which is willed by 
Gop, and necessary for spiritual life. Without the 
civitas terrena, the heavenly czvitas becomes unattain- 
able, since only in the brotherhood of mankind can 


1 Dante has in mind Aristotle’s famous conception of the State as ywwouevn 
ev rod fay &vexa, obca dé rod eb fH (Poltt, 1. ii. 8, cf. de Mon. 1. v. 33); cf, 
Gierke, notes 310, 311, 313, and p. 91. 


DANTE DE MONARCHIA 291 


man develop all the capacities of the soul necessary for 
his entrance into the kingdom of heaven.” 

“ What is essential here is the vindication for secular 
life and secular authority of its own proper dignity and 
height, as independent of all else on earth. Civil 
society and human law hold their commission, as it 
were, direct from GOD, and not through the papacy 
or through any other medium claiming to be nearest 
to him and to act on his behalf. Within its proper 
sphere and for the rendering of its proper service to 
mankind, human law is in truth Gop’s will, and He 
fulfils himself through the State as directly as through 
the Church.” ? 

The Gregorian interpretation of the Kingdom of 
Gop had, when the de Monarchia was written, achieved 
its final and decisive victory over the Imperialist ideal 
by which Dante is inspired. But Dante, the spokes- 
man of the lay conscience of medieval Christendom, 
records its moral failure. He has no shade of suspicion 
of the Pope’s spiritual authority, but he reaffirms the 
demand of Arnold of Brescia that the Pope should be 
the purely spiritual head of a purely spiritual Church. 
His appeal rests, as its intellectual basis, on the 
political philosophy of Aristotle; but theologically 
he goes back to Scripture, the early Councils, the 
Fathers, and to St. Augustine. He heaps grave 
scorn upon the stock papal arguments of the two 
swords, the two great lights, and the donation of 
Constantine which he says the Church, from its 


1 Villani, as quoted by Antonelli, 7’Jdea Guelfa, etc., sub fin. Dante is 
not afraid to quote Averroes (on Arist. de Ax, iii.) in support of his 
doctrine (cf. Znf. iv. 144). 

* Paget (as above, p. 288, note). 


292 REGNUM DEI 





essential nature, was as incapable of receiving as the 
emperor of conferring. 

Dante is wholly unconscious, apparently, of the 
contrast between his position and that taken up in 
the de Civitate Dez; but the contrast is unmistakable 
and significant. Augustine had, in an ideal and un- 
practical form, suggested a relation between Catholic 
Church and Christian State, which the development 
of a papacy had rendered capable of practical trial. 
The trial had been made on a magnificent scale, and 
Dante leaves on record what the trial had brought to 
light, namely, that the Church cannot assume the 
government of human affairs except at the cost of her 
spiritual character. The de Monarchia, then, is the 
reversal of the principles of the de Czvitate Dei, in so 
far as those principles had laid the foundation for the 
conception of the Kingdom of GOD as an omnipotent 
Church. But it does not directly touch the further 
question which is really involved, that, namely, of the 
constitution of the Church itself. And yet, without 
something of that temporal power of which Dante 
pronounces the Church inherently incapable, the con- 
centration of spiritual authority in the papacy lacks 
its indispensable means. So Gregory vil. had held, 
and so the most consistent upholders of the papacy 
maintain to this day. But Dante, who uncom- 

1 The ‘‘ temporal power ” includes the two distinct ideas of (a) universal 
jurisdiction (whether direct or indirect) even 7 ‘emporalibus, and (6d) 
exclusive sovereignty over the pope’s own territory. As to (a) the whole 
world is the Church’s territory ; Tarquini (/7s¢. I. i. 2, ad. ob7. 2) quotes 
a Bull of Clement x1. (Accepimus), which condemns the idea that any 
papal Bull can arrive 7 territorio alieno. The limits of this power must 


be determined by the authority in which that power resides. The Chris¢zan 
Prince as such has no power in Church affairs, He will show himself 


DANTE DE MONARCHIA 293 


promisingly condemns the temporal power in every 
shape and form, looks for its abolition only to purify 
and strengthen the spiritual. Yet, perhaps, we may 
see an inkling of further insight in his complaints 
of the exclusive study by Churchmen of the papal 
decretals to the neglect of the Fathers and Holy 
Scripture The decretals, and not the Theology and 
Philosophy of which the Decretalists were, as he says, 
inscit et expertes, had as a matter of fact been the 
basis on which the entire papal system was reared.” 
Dante is protesting against the substitution of the 
decretals for Scripture, not against the decretals in 
themselves, “quas profecto venerandas existimo.” What 
would he have said had he known their true history ! 


such by submitting himself ‘‘tanquam agnum” (Palmieri, de Rom. Pont. 
ed. 2, § 18. iv.). As to (6) the principle follows from the fact that 
ture divino naturali the head of the Church (which is a soctetas perfecta, 
not a mere co//egium or association) cannot be the subject of any civil ruler. 
De facto independence is indeed not aédso/utely necessary ; for it did not 
exist under the Roman Empire. But even then (see also Gierke, note 55), 
as Leo XIII. pointed out when bishop of Perugia, ‘‘ pontifices subditi erant 
guoad factum, non guoad ius” (in 1860 quoted by Lehmkuhl, 7heo/. Mor. 
vol. i. § 139). Temperate defenders of the temporal power, in sense (4), 
maintain that it is indispensable in order that the pope may effectively 
fulfil his universal charge, ‘‘ negotiate with Christian princes on questions 
of Faith and Morals as a superior, on purely political questions as an 
equal” (A. Weber in Atrch.-Zex. s.v. ‘‘ Kirchenstaat”). This at the least is 
involved in the conception of the societas perfecta to be referred to below 
(p- 344). 
1 See de Mon. i. iii., and Par. 1X. 132 sqq.: gold, he says :— 


*“fatto ha lupo del Pastore. 
Per questo, Pevangelio e i Dottor magni 
Son derelitti, e solo ai Decretali 
Si studia si che pare a’lor vivagni.” 


2 See above, p. 229. On the development of Canon Law see Rashdall, 
Universities of Europe, i. 128 sqq. and reff. By Dante’s time it consisted of 
Gratian’s Decretum, the Five Books of Decretals collected by Gregory Ix., 
and the ‘‘ Sextus” lately issued by Boniface vil. 


204 REGNUM DE. 





In any case Dante recognises no divine law outside 
the Scriptures. They alone are above the Church. 
The Councils and the Fathers are on a level with 
the Church; traditions, including Church law, are fost 
ecclestam, of ecclesiastical origin, although to be re- 
spected on the ground of their “apostolic” (ze. papal) 
authority. 

(6) Dante writes in the middle of a period of over 
forty years, during which the history of the empire 
is, so far as Italy is concerned, a blank. The popes 
had waged a war of extermination against the last 
scions of the House of Hohenstaufen; they had suc- 
ceeded by the aid of Charles of Anjou, to whom 
they had given the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. But 
they had purchased an ally to find a master. The 
popes become from henceforth more and more the 
dependents of the French Crown, and in a few years 
were to begin the seventy years’ exile at Avignon. 
The cities of the North of Italy were fast exchanging 
their republican freedom for the reign of despots, and 
the old parties were degenerating into petty factions 
without principles or ideals. Italy was drifting into 
moral anarchy, the prelude to political servitude. 
What wonder if the higher minds sought refuge from 
the gloomy present in the past glories of the empire, 
—idealised as it was in a generation that was already 
forgetting the sad vicissitudes of its struggles with 
the papacy and with the popular liberties of the 
towns? In the very year of the transfer of the 
papacy to Avignon, Dante’s ideal of the emperor 


1 De Mon, it. xiv., “omnis . . . divina lex duorum Testamentorum 
gremio continetur.” 


FRANCISCANS AND JOHN XXII 295 


found a brief promise of realisation in the person of 
Henry of Luxemburg, who came to Italy with the 
blessing of Clement v.! and the acclamation of patriots, 
and obtained the crown at the cost of papal disfavour, 
factious opposition, and a mysterious death. Dante’s 
de Monarchia was in a true sense the epitaph of a 
dead ideal; but in a truer sense still the prophecy of 
a more glorious future. 

That future was not to come so quickly as Dante 
hoped, nor by the means that he foresaw.? His actual 
anticipations were coloured by a train of thought 
which links him to another of those movements of 
the time which mark a reaction from the secular 
lordship of the papacy, I mean the aspirations of the 
spiritual Franciscans. 

The great movement of the Friars, now a century 
old, is typical of the twofold genius of the medieval 
Church; in the persons of Francis and Dominic she 
puts forth the two great powers which secured her 
hold upon the world, the power of repressive force, 
and the power of pure self-sacrificing love. Not of 
course that either is thus exhaustively, or adequately, 
summed up. Dominic and his order certainly stand 
for much more than mere force and persecution. If 


1 Par, xvii. 82: “il Guasco l’alto Arrigo inganni” (cf. xxx. 137). That 
the prophecy in Puxg. xxxiii. 37-45 refers to Henry has been convincingly 
argued by Dr. Moore in his recent lecture, The DXV Prophecy, etc. 
(Oxford, 1901. Briefly, it is a Hebrew ‘‘Gematria.” As 666 to “‘ Nero 
Caesar,” so DXV to “‘ Arrico”). 

* Of the mass of interpretations of the great historical allegory, Purg. 
xxix.—xxxiii., Mr. Butler’s notes and Déllinger’s deeply interesting essay, 
“Dante als Prophet” (Akadem. Vortriige, i. 78 sqq.), and the notes in 
Costa’s ed. represent the extent of my knowledge. Dr. Moore’s Lecture 
(above quoted) sums up the result of his unsurpassed command of Dante 
lore. 


296 REGNUM DEI 


their spiritual ideal was less tender and exalted than 
that of the saint of Assisi, the order in its after-history 
has on the whole maintained a higher level of intellect 
and work. The Friars Preachers are to be judged 
not so much by the Inquisition as by Albert the 
Great and Thomas Aquinas, by Fra Angelico and 
Savonarola, by the long roll of austere and truth- 
loving students, second only to the Benedictines of 
St. Maur, who adorned the order in the “great 
century” of France. But the person of Francis and 
the Franciscan ideal are more universal in their appeal 
to Christian sympathy, more directly expressive of 
what is characteristically noble in the spirit of medieval 
religion. “In religion a leader of leaders. Allowing 
himself neither food nor clothing beyond what strictest 
necessity compelled, he went about preaching; seek- 
ing nothing for himself but all for God. And he 
became loved and admired by all.” These words, 
taken from a contemporary description! of Arnold of 
Brescia, are a not unworthy description of Francis. 
In him, Arnold’s aim of reviving the example of 
evangelical poverty lived again, but with a winning 
poetical graciousness in the place of Arnold’s stern 
implacability, and wedded to absolute submission to 
that Church which alone represented God upon earth. 
But the fundamental idea of Francis is that of Arnold, 
and of Dante also, that the example of Christ and 
the Apostles, who had no property individually or in 
common, is the true standard of Christian life. We 
know how rigorously Francis himself kept and en- 
forced this principle; he would neither have, nor 


1 Map, de Nugis curial,, Dist. i. 24 3 see above, p. 261, note I. 





FRANCISCANS AND JOHN XXII 297 


permit his brethren to have, where to lay their head; 
no church for the order, not even a breviary was to 
be possessed by its members.1 They were to live 
upon work and alms, not of money but in kind, and 
every particle that they received beyond the strict 
necessaries of life was the property of the poor. But 
before long the very success of the order made the 
strict observance of its rule impossible.2 The Fran- 
ciscans had made their way into the university of 
Paris before the short life of their founder was 
ended ;* and while some of the brethren were carry- 
ing Catholic missions into the furthest East, in 
Europe the order was leading the way in the new 
scholasticism, and acquiring monasteries and corporate 
property.‘ 

The unworldly enthusiasm to which the order owed 
its existence began to chafe against the requirements 
of an establishment organised on a permanent basis.5 
Within some twenty years of St. Francis’ death, the 
Friars Minors had absorbed, and were developing 
further, the ideas of Abbot Joachim the prophet of 


1 Francis rebukes a novice who wishes to possess a psalter: ‘* Postquam 
habueris psalterium concupisces et volueris habere breviarium. Et post- 
quam habueris breviarium sedebis in cathedra tanquam magnus praelatus 
et dices fratri tuo: apporta mihi breviarium,” Speculum Perfectionis, ii. 4 
(Sabatier’s editio princeps, 1898). 

2 Lempp, Frére Elie de Cortone, 1901. 

3 Supra, p. 279, note 2. Francis died Oct. 4, 1226, aged 44. Alexander 
of Hales (‘‘ Doctor irrefragabilis,” ‘‘ Theologorum Monarcha”) at Paris 
1222 ; joins Franciscans (who had had a college there since 1217) in 1229. 
(Rashdall, i. 345-371.) 

*Lempp, Frére Elie. 

*This is bound up with the story of -Cardinal Ugolino (afterwards 
Gregory 1x.), and his relations with the Bretiic-n, whom he was instru- 
mental in transforming into an Order, in spite of the reluctance of St. Francis 
himself (see Lempp’s work, cited above). 


298 REGNUM DEI 





Fiore in Calabria. This visionary recluse, elevated by 
Dante to the heaven of the sun, in company with SS. 
Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the other 
heroes of Christian philosophy, was, like the “ Seraphic 
Doctor,” a student of the Apocalypse. In him there 
reappears the same eschatological reaction against the 
hierarchical embodiment of the Kingdom of Gop 
which had inspired Montanus in the second century.) 
Joachim can hardly have known of the Phrygian 
prophets, or have borrowed directly from them; but 
the essential kinship of ideas is unmistakable. The 
three dispensations of the Father, the Son, and the 
Spirit, the millennial Kingdom in which the latter is to 
find its fruit-bearing period, are common to the two, 
though the crude realism of the second century, and 
its abrupt breach with the organised Church, give place 
in Joachim to the idea of a regeneration which will 
transfigure and spiritualise rather than supersede the 
existing forms. The Old Testament was the dispensa- 
tion of bondage, of the law, the time of the married and 
of the laity;? the New that of the gospel of Christ, 
of freedom mixed with bondage, of letter and spirit, 
of the clergy. The third dispensation is that of the 
Spirit, the eternal gospel, the period of the monks. 
Its beginning was with Benedict, to whose order 


1See Lect. IV. pp. 136-143. On Joachim, see Dollinger, Prophecies 
and the Prophetic Spirit, chap. vii. ; Dante, Par. xii. 140. 

2 Answering to the Apostle St. Peter (see Matt. viii. 14, etc. ; 1 Cor. 
25, 550 Vs): 

3 Corresponding to St. Paul (1 Cor. vii. 8). 

4The dispensation of St. Tohn (see John xiv. etc., Rev. xiv. 6, and 
Lect. IV. p. 123, note 1).,. The scheme of seven stages (status) for the 
world’s history is also 4 revival of primitive Millenniarism (see above, 


p. 129). 


FRANCISCANS AND JOHN XXII 299 


Joachim had first belonged, its fructification was to 
be brought about by a new order of spiritual men, 
who would preach the Everlasting Gospel, unite divided 
Christendom, convert the Jews and the elect of all 
nations, and complete the Kingdom of Christ. 

To enthusiastic Franciscans, Joachim seemed the 
divinely-inspired herald of their order and its mission. 
In 1254 Fra Gerardino published at Paris his “ Intro- 
duction to the Everlasting Gospel,” ! ze. to the writings 
of Joachim, which now take rank as a third Testament, 
the bible of the new dispensation, of which St. Francis 
and his order were the accredited ministers, and which 
was actually to begin in the year 1260. The ideas of 
Joachim were fermenting throughout the order, and 
were to no small degree responsible for the schism 
between the “spirituals,’” who insisted on the literal 
maintenance of the example of their founder, and the 
conventuals, the regular and official portion who 
acquiesced in the requirements of established life. The 
question at issue was twofold. All alike were agreed 
that the possession of individual property was incon- 
sistent with the example of Christ and the Apostles. 
But firstly, does the condemnation of “ possession” 
(dominium) carry with it the condemnation of mere 
“use”? and secondly, does the condemnation of fer- 
sonal possession involve the condemnation of common 
property? The spirituals answered the latter question 
wholly in the affirmative. Christ and his apostles Zos- 
sessed nothing, even incommon; and even their common 
“use” was restricted to the most elementary necessities. 


'See Dollinger, Prophecies, etc., p. 124 sq.; A. S. Farrar, Bampton 
Lectures, p. 120; Rashdall, Universities, i. 382, ii. ~ 28 (and reff.) 


300 REGNUM DEI 





This principle cut straight at the root of the idea of 
the Church as a body capable of holding temporal 
dominium,' and we have seen that Dante so employs 
it; but this point was not at first in the foreground 
of controversy. The question was treated, as involving 
not the general life of the Church, but the specific 
observance of the mendicant friars. The order had 
common property ; but its “ possession” was vested in 
the Pope as trustee for the Society, while the wsws was 
for the order itself. But even so, the order possessed 
an income in money and in kind far beyond the needs 
of its individual members. The conventuals justified 
this by branding as heretical the axiom of the spirituals, 
that Christ and the Apostles possessed nothing in 
common. This was the issue brought before Pope 
Nicolas II. in 1278. In his Bull “ Exiit qui seminat,” 
he decided, on the basis of a strict distinction between 
possession and use, that the renunciation of all pro- 
perty, corporate as well as personal, was holy and 
meritorious, and commended to us by the example of 
Christ and of his Apostles. This decision was to be 
taken as the official explanation of the rule of St. 


1 Dante, de Mon, 111. x., xv. The term ‘‘dominium,” in medieval 
thought, comprises without very clear distinction the to us quite separate 
conceptions of personal property and political jurisdiction. The Franciscan 
ideal, at first held up as a standard for the Christian life generally, soon 
became reduced to the distinctive rule of an Order ; but its practice con- 
stituted the Minorites as ‘‘ Perfecti’’ in comparison with other Christians 
(e.g. “‘ perfectus” in Marsil. Def. Pacis, 11. xiv.: ‘‘posset piscem capere 
perfectus atq. comedere, cum expresso tamen prius uoto nunquam prae- 
dictum piscem azt rem aliguam temporalem vendicandi contentiose coram 
iudice coactiuo”). See also the strong utterances of the Minorite Abp. 
Peckham in Little’s Grey Friars in Oxford, p. 76. The original idea 
revived in the controversy under John xx1I. On the whole subject, Mr. 
Little’s book contains much interesting material. 


FRANCISCANS AND JOHN XXII 301 


Francis, and. to be taught literally without explanatory 
glosses, on pain of excommunication. The schism in 
the order continued. The conventuals claimed a 
usus moderatus, while the rigorists would allow only a 
usus tenuis vel pauper. Clement Vv. in the Council of 
Vienne,” by the Bull “ Exivi de paradiso,” renewing the 
decision of his predecessor, decided in favour of the 
latter section, and bade all spirituals return to the 
order on pain of excommunication. But some still 
stood out. The convents had larders and cellars, and 
this was an offence to the uncompromising defenders of 
the pauper usus; the latter also affected a more meagre 
habit than their brethren. When John xxII. became 
pope (1316), he at once issued a Bull® against them, 
and seconded the efforts of the general, Michael di 
Cesena, to put them down. Meanwhile another 
section of the order, the Fraticelli, had gone further 
still. In their zeal for Holy Poverty they outdid even 
the spirituals; they denied the validity of the sacra- 
ments ministered by a worldly priesthood, the primacy 


1 The definitive words are quoted by Riezler, p. 63, n.: ‘‘ Dicimus quod 
abdicatio proprietatis huiusmodi omnium rerum tam in speciali quam etiam 
in communi propter Deum meritoria est et sancta, quam et Christus uiam 
perfectionis ostendens uerbo docuit et exemplo firmautt.” 

2 4.D. 1311-12. The ownership of all the property of the order was 
regarded (since 1245, Innoc. Iv.) as vested in the pope (Little, p. 77). 
But see the curious controversy between the Minorites and Friars Preachers 
(A.D. 1269), published in Little, p. 320 sqq., where this solution does 
not occur (pp. 322, 325, 331). 

3  Quorumdam exigit,” A.D. 1317. Cf. Dollinger, Akad. Vortrége, i. 
127 sq. 

4In 1318 four brethren were burned at Marseilles for disobedience. 
They refused to alter the shape of their cowls, or to acquiesce in larders 
and cellars. The ‘‘spirituals” were regarded as ‘‘heretics” on the 
question of poverty only, the Fraticelli were charged with various other 
errors as well. See Denzinger, Zvchir. \xii., and for references, Riezler, 
Lit, Widersdcher, 61, n., and Rashdall, i. 529, n. 


\ 


302 REGNUM DEI 





of the Pope, and the lawfulness of oaths. They 
rejected the rich and secularised Church, and claimed 
that the true Church is to be realised only by poverty, 
purity, and simplicity. The Fraticelli, who are not to 
be confused with the spirituals, were widely spread 
in the South of France and in Sicily. Within a few 
years one hundred and fourteen of them were burned 
as heretics in Catalonia and Narbonne. 

Dante was in profound sympathy with the spirit- 
uals; he looked to the principle of Holy Poverty for 
the expulsion of greed and simony from the Church; 
for the purification, not the destruction, of the papacy ; 
for the destruction of the temporal power and the 
restoration of the spiritual. For the victory of Holy f 
Poverty in the Church, for the regeneration of Italy and 3 
the end of the woes of the nations, he is by some 
thought to point expressly to a felt-clad friar. But 


1 Thus Dollinger (Azad. Vortr. i. 93 sqq.) understands Jif. i, 101 sqq. :— 


. infin che il veltro 
Verra, che la fera morir di doglia. 
Questi non cibera terra ni peltro, 
Ma sapienza e amore e virtute, 
E sua nazion sara tra feltro e feltro. 


act t ee hee 62 


To pronounce between Dollinger and the great mass of modern inter- 
preters is a task which I do not presume to attempt. Dollinger insists 
that ‘‘ feltro” is not a place-name (for this he appeals to the express state- 
ment of the poet’s son), but means literally fe/¢ (for this he appeals to ‘‘all 
interpreters before the 16th cent.”). The Veltro (cf. the Dominican 
badge of a dog, dominz canis, with a burning torch) is either the 
personal bringer-in of Joachim’s “‘sextus status,” or the Spiritual Order 
generally (Par. xi. 131). The latter alternative can hardly be entertained ; 
the Veltro must be intended for a person, not a corporate body or 
abstraction. On the other hand, whether Dante actually joined the 
Franciscan order or not, his sympathy for its ideas, and for the ‘‘spirit- 
uals ” especially, and his belief in Joachim as a prophet, would hardly be 
likely to leave no traces upon his prediction of the downfall of the reign of 
avarice, 


—— 


FRANCISCANS AND JOHN XXII 303 


the logic of events was soon to show the impossibility 
of attacking the temporal without examining the foun- 
dations of the spiritual power; and the friars had to 
choose between an open rebellion, doomed, however 
lasting in its consequences, to fail in its immediate 
purpose, and the position of an endowed and estab- 
lished institution in the service of a wealthy Church. 
John XXII. is one of the least lovable figures in 
papal history. He had the respectable virtues of 
industry and frugality, and the respectable failing of 
avarice. Like Clement v. he was a son of Cahors, 
then the centre of usury in Christendom.t In his 
pontificate of eighteen years (1316-1334) he spent 
largely, on wars of his own, money collected for a new 
crusade, and yet at his death he left a treasure equiva- 
lent to ten millions sterling.2 He apparently intro- 
duced the universal levy of annates, which by system- 
atic translations yielded the revenue of two, three, or 
four benefices upon every important vacancy. The 
question whether Christ and his Apostles possessed 
property singly or in common came before John in 
1321. The inquisitor of Narbonne, in the course of 
proceedings against the Fraticelli, had pronounced the 
negative opinion heretical. A conventual Franciscan 


1 Inf. xi. 50 :— 
. e Sodoma e Caorsa 
E chi, spregiando Dio, col cor favella, 


And cf. Matth. Par. ad ann, 1235. 

2 Twenty-five million ‘‘ florins” (seven millions in jewels, etc., the rest in 
gold coin). The collections were for a crusade, for which the pope also 
prepared by a geographical commission. But meanwhile the fleet was 
lent to Robert of Naples (1319) for his campaign against Genoa, the 
money levied from the rich bishopric of Salzburg was allocated to Leopold 
of Austria for prosecuting the war against Lewis ; Clement v1. followed 
this example a few years later (Riezler, Zz¢. Widers. p. 6). 


304 REGNUM DEI 


protested, and the rival orders brought the matter to 


the Pope, who was still informing himself on the | 4 


subject when the general chapter of the Minorite order 
at Perugia, under Cesena, published as their mature 
conclusion that the impugned doctrine was not heretical. 
As this doctrine had been expressly laid down in the 
Bull of Nicholas II, the assertion of it by the chapter 
can hardly be called a rash one. The Pope, however, 
was roused to indignation. His sympathy with the 
fantastic heroism of the spirituals was hardly greater 
than that of Alexander vi. for Savonarola. He called 
upon the order to assume formal responsibility for its 
corporate ownership, rejected, at any rate as regards 
perishable things, the distinction of “wsus” and 
“ dominium,’ and declared heretical the doctrine that 
Christ and His Apostles possessed nothing even in 
common. The Minorites’ appeal to the previous and 
contrary papal decisions of Nicolas and Clement was 
summarily disposed of by a new decretal,” to the effect 
that a pope might at any time reverse decisions given 
by his predecessors (per clavem scientiae) upon matters 


1 See above, p. 301, note I. The Bulls in question are ‘‘ Cum inter non- 
nullos” (1323, Denzinger, lxiii.) and the constitution ‘‘ Quia uir reprobus ” 
(1329). 

2 “ Quia quorundam” (1324). Defenders of papal infallibility argue that 
this was no question of faith or morals. But why then did John pronounce 
it a matter of evesy? An infallible authority can apparently make 
mistakes as to its proper sphere of exercise. See Bellarmine’s admission 
(quoted by Déllinger, Papstthum, p. 493): ‘‘ uidetur facere quaestionem 
de fide, utrum usus, etc. . . . nam semper uocat haereticum eum qui 
contrarium sentit . . . Itaque exurget aliud ‘bellum Papale,’ sz haeretict 
haec aduertant.” (For the defence, Denzinger refers the reader to Natal. 
Alex. H. Z. Saec. 13 et 14, diss. xi. art. 1; the point to be met is that 
Nicolas lays it down that Christ set the example of abdicating all property, 
individual or common, while John pronounces this tenet erroneous and 
heretical.) 





WILLIAM OF OCKHAM 305 


of faith and morals.1_ Horrified at this pronouncement, 
Cesena, general of the order, betook himself to the 
protection of the new emperor Lewis of Bavaria 
(1327). Recalled to Avignon, he appears only to be 
overwhelmed with reproaches by the pope, who refers 
his cause to a hostile committee. In fear for his 
person, he escapes from Avignon (1328) in company 
with two prominent brethren of the order, Fra 
Bonagrazia of Bergamo and Friar William of Ockham, 
the “ Invincible Doctor” of the University of Paris. 

(c) Lewis, chosen emperor by the majority of the 
seven electors in 1314, had in 1322 signally defeated 
Frederick of Austria, the candidate of the minority, at 
the battle of Miihldorf. But the Pope would not 
recognise his imperial right. Italy was the apple of 
discord. The Pope, who, while the fortune of war 
‘seemed doubtful, had played a waiting game, now made 
it clear to Lewis that he would not recognise him as 
emperor, nor even as king of the Romans, unless he 
practically surrendered all Italian pretensions. He 
replied by taking practical steps to assert his imperial 
rights in the peninsula. John replied with an im- 
perious summons to submit to the papal right to 
administer the empire “during a vacancy” (ze. until 
the Pope should please to recognise a new emperor). 
Lewis made a formal protest (December 1323). After 
further wrangles the Pope, on March 23, 1324, 
launched an excommunication against Lewis and an 
interdict against his territories. 


1John also condemned the writings of d’Oliva of Beziers (| 1297) the 
leader of the spirituals. They were afterwards re-examinec by order of 
Sixtus Iv. and pronounced orthodox (Dollinger, Prophecies, p. 126, cf. 
Papstthum, 493, note 66). 
20 


306 REGNUM DEI 


Cesena and Ockham found Lewis in Italy, whither, 
after some vacillation, he had gone in the beginning of 
1327. By the beginning of 1328 he had victoriously 
entered Rome, and a decisive blow might have crushed 
Robert of Naples, secured the allegiance of Italy, and 
opened a prospect of success to his claim to treat John 
XXII. as a heretic, zso facto deposed from the papal 
throne. But Lewis had missed his opportunity. He 
wasted his time in the parade of a Roman coronation, 
in the election of an antipope by the Roman people, 
and his popularity in a series of violent measures, 
which finally lost him all hold upon his Italian sup- 
porters. Slowly and reluctantly he retreated from 
Italy ; in 1330 he had retired to Bavaria. Italy drops 
out of the imperial horizon; for the remaining seven- 
teen years of his life Lewis fights simply for his position 
as German emperor, and is only prevented by French 
influence at Avignon from becoming reconciled to the 
pope The struggle of Lewis was of importance 
solely because of the new intellectual forces which it 
arrayed against the papacy. Lewis, the “brave, 
gentle, good-natured, but all too weak and irresolute 
Lewis,” failed, the great protagonists in the struggle 
surrendered almost without exception before it was 


1 Lewis crowné¢d at Aachen, 1314; defeats Frederick at Miihldorf, 1322 ; 
John xxi. summons Lewis to resign, 1323; Lewis protests, 1323-24 ; 
John ‘‘ deposes” Lewis, 1324; Marsilius at Niirnberg, Defensor Pacis, 
1325 ; Ockham in Bavaria, 1328 ; Lewis crowned at Rome, January 1328 ; 
Nicholas v. antipope, May 1328; captivity and recantation of Nicolas, 
1330; Benedict xl. pope, 1334; Lewis prepared to seek Benedict’s 
pardon, 1336-38; Electoral Declaration at Rense, 1338; Ockham’s 
Dialogus, 1335-38 ; Clement vi. pope, 1342; fruitless overtures of Lewis 
to Clement, 1343-46 ; Clement excommunicates Lewis, 1346 ; Charles of 
Moravia rival emperor, 1346; death of Lewis, 1347. On Lewis and his 
«¢ Sisyphus-task ” see Dollinger, Azad. Vortr. i. 29-31, 120 sqq. 





WILLIAM OF OCKHAM 307 


over. But new ideas emerged, never again to dis- 
appear, new questions were raised which no ephemeral 
victories could evade. The break-up of the theocratic 
idea of the Middle Ages, the slow growth of the modern 
theory of the State, was, for better or for worse, inexor- 
ably making its way. 

The idea of the de Monarchia was carried forward 
by two remarkable men, William of Ockham and 
Marsilius of Padua. Ockham had made his fame as 
a doctor at Paris, and Pope Clement VI. ascribes to his 
influence the doctrines formulated by Marsilius. This 
may be true, but Ockham’s political writings belong to 
a much later date than that of the Defensor Pacts. 
Ockham accompanied Lewis to Munich, and it was 
there, in the years following 1330, that he wrote his 
epoch-making criticisms of the fundamental ideas of 
the medieval papacy. His method is strictly dialectical, 
the method of Sz et Non. He writes with great 
caution and reserve, giving both sides of every question, 
and rarely if ever expressing a verdict of his own. 
His voluminous works may easily be made, by 
judicious extracts, to support quite opposite views of 
the questions in debate. He is entirely orthodox 
and indeed ascetic in his interests. The Beatific 
Vision, the Sacrament of the altar, apostolic Poverty 
are the subjects that engross an almost preponderating 
proportion of his zeal. On two of these points, indeed, 
he is convinced of the heresy of Pope John, and this 
conviction no doubt went far to determine him in his 
attitude toward the papacy in relation to Church and 
empire. This last is the subject of his first political 


1 In the Opus xc dierum. 


AO ee a Ce 
Reel i ies ‘ites: 
A Se AT tar 
Pag Pe Maes 


308 REGNUM DEI 


tract: “Super potestate summi pontificis octo quaes- 
tionum decisiones.” It was written shortly after the 
Diet at Rense in which the electors vindicated their 
right to an absolute choice of the emperor without any 
papal veto.1 

Ockham bases his work on Scripture, Aristotle’s 
Politics, the Civil and Canon Law, the Fathers, includ- 
ing St. Bernard de Consideratione, the Sentences, and 
the historians, including Otto of Freisingen the 
historian of Frederick Barbarossa. He deals with the 
donation of Constantine, which he uses to prove that 
the pope received the Alenztudo potestatis from the 
emperor; with the election of Charles the Great, as to 
which he observes that only a knowledge of more 
details than were on record would warrant any definite 
conclusion. As to the difference between the Kingly 
Power, conferred by the electors, and the imperial 
coronation and unction by the pope, he apparently 
holds that the former comprises all the substantial right 
of an emperor. The coronation confers not a tem- 
poral but a spiritual gift; for this he quaintly appeals 
to the case of the French and English kings, who by 
anointing and coronation receive, “as it is said,” the 
supernatural power of touching for the King’s Evil. 
All this is somewhat technical and relative to the 
claims of the pope against the medieval emperors. It 
is otherwise with the Dialogue between a master and 
his disciple, which was called forth by the new ex- 
communication and interdict pronounced against Lewis 
by Clement VI. in 1343. This Dialogue, which the 


1Qn the ‘‘ Weisung” of 1338 see Bryce, HRE. pp. 220, 236, note 
(ed. 4). 


WILLIAM OF OCKHAM 309 


contemporary chronicler Abbot John of Viktring? 
praises for its moderation, discusses the origin of the 
papacy. The master holds that Christ gave Peter no 
principality over the Apostles, that Peter was never 
bishop of Rome, and that the primacy of the pope is 
of human origin. He goes on to the indefectibility of 
the Church, which he maintains as guaranteed for all 
time, in contrast to its infallibility at any given time. 
Neither pope, nor council, nor clergy, nor the majority 
of the faithful are exempt from the possibility of error. 
In the latter part of the book, he discusses monarchy 
both in Church and State, and decides that it is essential 
in neither. Aristotle’s qualified preference for monarchy 
applies to particular States, not to the world as a whole. 
The world as a rule, though there may be exceptions, 
is better without a universal monarchy. 

Passing to the question what books contain all 
doctrine necessary to salvation, Ockham decides, with. 
Dante, that this can be claimed for the canonical 
Scriptures alone, as interpreted by the ecumenical 
councils, and on the points necessary for eternal salva- 
tion, as they are to be found in the creeds. This at 
least appears to be his view, though he hesitates on the 
one hand as to the inclusion of other writings by 
apostolic men, on the other hand as to the authority 
of afl conciliar decisions, which often are based upon 
mere human wisdom. Toward the end of the book 
he comes back to the office of St. Peter and the 
infallibility of the whole Church at any given time, and 
appears disposed to assert, at least in part, what in the 
first part of the book he had called in question. 

1 As quoted by Riezler, Zit. Widersdcher, etc., p. 257. 


310 REGNUM DEI 


But on two points he is quite clear throughout, 
namely, that the pope has no power over the world in 
temporal matters, and that he is not infallible. These 
are the two cardinal points of the Gregorian system, 
and in Ockham we see the scholastic mind shaking itself 
loose from the presuppositions which had governed the 
medieval conception of the Kingdom of Christ on earth. 

Repeatedly he gives utterance to the conviction, 
distinctive of modern as against medieval thought, 
that the forms of government both in Church and 
State must change with the changing needs of the 
times The great nominalist comes, in fact, very near 
to the ideas of relativity and of development which lie 
at the root of the modern and scientific conception 
of history. 

Of Ockham’s philosophy, and of its profound influ- 
ence in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, I cannot 
speak here. But it is worth noticing, to his honour, 


1 The monarchy of the bishop, he argues, may be expedient for the 
diocese, while a monarchy may yet be undesirable for the Church as a 
whole (D/ya/. 11. xxx.). For more details of Ockham’s views than I can 
give in the text, and for interesting extracts from his contemporary, Lupold 
of Bebenburg, the reader must refer to the notes in Gierke, Poltical 
Theories of the Middle Age (Camb. 1900). One striking passage on the 
papal plenztudo potestatis must be quoted (Dza/. 111. v., in Goldast, Jon. ii. 
776 sq.). ‘‘Lex Christiana,” argues the Magzster, ‘‘est lex libertatis 
respectu ueteris legis, quae respectu nouae legis fuit lex seruitutis. Sed si 
Papa habet a Christo talem plenitudinem potestatis ut omnia possit quae 
non sunt contra legem diuinam nec contra legem naturae, lex Christiana 
ex institutione Christi esset lex intolerabilis seruitutis . . . Lex Christiana 
est lex libertatis per quam Christiani a seruitute sunt erepti, ultra in serui- 
tutem minime reducendi,” etc. The Dzsczfu/us objects that this applies 
only to freedom from szz, and from the old law, otherwise a ‘‘ religious ” 
Rule, and even civil obedience, would be unlawful. The J/agister replies 
that the principle does apply quantitatively ; we are emancipated by Christ 
from any servitude equal to, or greater than, that of the Jews, as the 
Apostle says “ ubi Spiritus Domini ibi libertas.” 


WILLIAM OF OCKHAM 311 


how absolutely free he is from servile accommodation 
to the imperial cause in which he writes. He is not 
the hireling scribe of a royal master, but the resolutely 
analytical mind, weighing argument against argument 
in a balance sensitive almost to instability, but ever in 
search not of the opportune but of the true. His in- 
decision is characteristic of the sceptical element in 
his philosophy, a scepticism which finds the highest 
exercise of the intellect rather in the pursuit of truth 
than in its apprehension, a scepticism which distrusts 
all proofs and throws the soul back upon the intuition 
of Faith, a scepticism which will end by taking refuge 
in external authority. 

Ockham’s influence on subsequent Christian thought 
has been twofold. If his example and direct teach- 
ing have favoured Christian liberty, his more lasting 
intellectual heritage has been the distrust not only of 
individual but of common reason and the strengthening 
of the tendency to rest belief simply upon the authority 
of the Church. 

(d) Marsilius of Padua? resembled Ockham in his 


1 On the general tendency of Ockham’s thought, cf. Prantl, Geschichte 
der Logik im Abendlande, iii. 328. In theology, his nominalistic scepticism 
encouraged the tendency to despair of rational proof of the articles of faith, 
and to rest in the fides carbonari?, the old antithesis of véu0c against dici. 
Ockham, before he died, sent the Seal of the Franciscan order, which had 
been in his custody since Cesena’s death in 1342, to the General, intimating 
his desire to make his peace with the Church. (Clement vi. had in 1343 
called God to witness that he desired Ockham’s salvation only next to his 
own.) He died probably April 9, 1347; a later tombstone existed in the 
old Franciscan church at Munich which was cleared away before the 
present Hof-Theater was built on the site (Riezler, pp. 126-128). 

? Not to be confused with the less famous ‘‘ Marsilius ab Inghen.” The 
name Raimundinus (al. Mainardinus, Menandrinus) is attested by his 
fellow-townsman Mussato. He was a Paduan, versed in medicine, philo- 
sophy, and theology. In 1312 he was Rector of the University of Paris, a 


312 REGNUM DEI 


learning, in his genius, in his fearless sincerity. But no 
two minds could be more differently constituted. Of 
Ockham’s nominalism,—in fact of metaphysical interests 
as such,—the Defensor Pacis has not a trace+ The 
Italian is positive, systematic, practical. Much again 
as he has in common with Dante, we miss in him the 
soaring poetry, the religious fire, at once transcendental 
and deeply personal, of the great Florentine. The 
physician-cleric of Padua is prosaic, impersonal. But 
the moral dignity and right-mindedness, the sincere 
sober zeal for religion, enlist the personal respect of 
the candid reader for the writer’s character, as well as 
wonder at his genius. For inferior as Marsilius is in 
many respects, especially in human interest, to Ockham 
and still more to Dante; as a political thinker this 
obscure student ranks high above them both. Others 
have, like him, amid institutions wholly different from 
their ideal, and with little help or suggestion from any 
living or past example, thought out the constitution to 
be desired for State or Church. But these have been 


quarterly office, filled from among the Masters of Arts. At Paris he was a 
hearer of Ockham. Marsilius is a man to be judged by his book. The 
little that is known of his personality from other sources is very thoroughly 
sifted by Riezler, pp. 30-38. It goes without saying that all that could be 
attempted by way of belittling his fame has been done, even down to a 
rigorous examination of his valet by the Inquisition in 1328. The result is 
naturally trifling. The most serious faults to be found with him concern 
his Roman administration in 1328,—Riezler’s rubric ‘‘ der Theoretiker als 
Praktiker” conveys the most just impression. 

1 John of Jandun, who is said to have assisted Marsilius in the prepara- 


tion of the Defensor Pacts, was (like Dante) a student of Averroes. But he ~ 


is wholly orthodox on the origin of the soul, and rejects the doctrine of an 
‘*intellectus communis” holding ‘‘ quot corpora humana tot intellectus.” 
John says he received the Commentary of Peter d’Abano on Arist. Prob/. 
‘per dilectissimum meum magistrum Marsilium de Padua.” (On John, 
who also combined philosophy with medicine, see Renan, Averroes (ed. 3), 
P. 339 sqq.; also Riezler, pp. 55-58.) 


A ee. 






4 
—_ =|... = os 


i ee ee ee 


DEFENSOR PACIS 313 


the Utopians, the dreamers. Marsilius alone has 
divined the secret of an age unborn, and laid down, in 
all essentials, the principles which were to mould the 
political institutions of the distant future. 

Marsilius fled from the University of Paris to join 
Lewis of Bavaria at Niirnberg in 1325 during the two 
years’ pause between the emperor’s first excommunica- 
tion by the pope and his descent into Italy. Till the end 
of his life he was in the confidence of the king, and as 
a practical statesman he cannot be said to have attained 
success! His title to greatness rests upon his book, which 
he brought with him finished from Paris, and issued in 
Bavaria. The result of a few weeks of rapid writing, it 
evidently condenses the study and thought of many years. 

The title, Defensor Pacis was probably due to the 


1 See above, note 2, and Riezler, pp. 42-55; Creighton, Pafacy, vol. i. 
p- 47 (ed. 1897). Marsilius’ failure in Italy is the natural failure of the 
attempt to apply modern liberalism to medieval conditions ; but further, 
*Tt was Marsiglio’s misfortune that he was allied to a cause which had not 
a leader strong enough to give adequate expression to the principles which 
the genius of Marsiglio supplied” (Creighton). The appointment of an 
antipope was a blunder only too characteristic of the Middle Ages. 

Marsilius died between 1336 and 1343, probably nearer the earlier than 
the later date. A tract ascribed to him, dealing with the nullity of the 
marriage of Margaret of Tirol to John of Luxemburg, and her marriage to 
Lewis’ son (1342) is pronounced spurious by Riezler (p. 234 sq.). 

2 Printed in Goldast, A/onarchia, ii. 154sqq. I have used the Frankfurt 
edition (Wechelius, 1592, small 8vo). His recapitulation may be read in 
Mirbt, Que//en, No. 100. The English edition of 1535 (‘‘ The Defence of 
Peace ; lately translated out of laten into englysshe ; with the kynges most 
gracyous privilege. —The Preface of Licentius Euangelus unto the Apologye 
or antswere made by Marsilius of Padway, for the defence of Lodowyke 
(which descended of the most noble lynage of the Dukes of Bavary), 
Emperour of the Romaynes,” etc. etc.) carefully suppresses the most funda- 
mental points of Marsilius’ political system, which were no doubt likely to 
collide dangerously with Tudor principles. In view of Marsilius’ unflinch- 
ing assertion of the sovereignty of the people, it would be difficult to 
imagine a more unjust or superficial characterisation ofhis spirit than that of 
Tarquini: ‘* Ludovico Bavaro adblanditus.” 


314 REGNUM DEI 





direct suggestion of Dante, de Monarchia, In any 
case, it is well chosen. That the peace of the world 
had been disturbed by the attempts of popes to en- 
force their authority in temporal things was pain- 
fully manifest. Like Dante and Augustine, Marsilius 
ranks peace as the highest earthly good. Adopting 
Aristotle’s famous axiom that the State is a self- 
sufficing whole, originating in the need to live, but 
existing in order to a good life (Pol. I. ii. 8), he defines 
peace as that “good disposition” of the State which 
allows every part of it to discharge perfectly its reason- 
able and normal functions. He seeks a principle which 
will relieve the nations of the strife and confusion which 
is inevitable when two authorities claim the sovereign 
power. In order to find it, he examines the funda- 
mental principles of government in Church and. State. 
And first as to the State: with an insight which marks 
a signal advance upon Dante, he distinguishes with 
perfect firmness of touch between the “ prince” and the 
“legislator.” The latter is sovereign in the ultimate 
sense; the prince is the supreme organ of the law, 
the head of the judiciary and of the executive. The 
legislator then is the “civium universitas, aut eius 
valentior pars”:! the first assertion in European 

1See Gierke, Polit. Theories, p. 43, and cf. Thom. Aq. Summa Th. 
rma, 172°, xc, 3 (3): Princeps ciuitatis potest in ciuitate legem facere. . . . 
Respondeo dicendum quod . . . condere legem uel pertinet ad totam 
multitudinem, uel pertinet ad personam publicam quae totius multitudinem 
curam habet. (See above, Lect. VI. p. 272, note 5.) The advance of 
Marsilius on Thomas, namely, the clear separation between the /egis/ative 
power vested in the wnzversétas, and the executive power of the princeps, is 
due to his more consistent grasp of Aristotle’s elementary conceptions. 
Thomas, who held that the Church is a ciuztas (Gierke, note 49, cf. 217), 


could never (consistently with 112. 112€. i, 10) have allowed that its princeps, 
the pope, was ‘‘gerens uicem totius multitudinis ” (Gierke, notes 165, 201), 


DEFENSOR PACIS 315 


politics of the sovereignty of the people. The legislator 
alone (or the person or persons entrusted by him with 
this power) has the right to suspend or dispense from 
laws. The duties of the prince are as far as possible 
to be settled by law, and he is responsible to the 
legislative authority for his conduct in administering it. 
He may be either a hereditary or elective prince; asa 
rule the latter is preferable’ There is room for one 
and one only supreme authority in the czvfas or 
kingdom. Coercive jurisdiction is lodged with the 
prince alone. He derives it solely from the legislator. 
No decretal, nor any ecclesiastical officer, can have 
coercive power except it be given by the human 
legislator. All questions of property, all educational 
appointments and professional licences, all dispensations 
for marriages against human law (against divine law no 
such dispensations are possible), the control, after the 
service of the Church has been provided for, of all 
surplus religious endowments, the administration of 
charitable bequests, the punishment of heretics or 
other delinquents, the determination of the conditions 
under which oaths may justly be dispensed from, 
appeals from any judgment, in whatever cause, involving 
coercive punishment,—all depend ultimately on the 
legislator alone. In fact, with the natural exception 
of the machinery of representative institutions,? the 


1 Here Thomas Aq. would agree; for the papal constitution of the 
Church (to Thomas the standard type of government) is that of an elective 
monarchy. (See Gierke, notes 131, 153.) 

* The principle of course is there. In their essential principles, the 
‘Order in Council,” ‘‘ Charity Commission,” ‘‘ Ecclesiastical Commission,” 
in a word the whole relation of the Crown and its executive to Parliament, 
are anticipated with extraordinary accuracy. 


316 REGNUM DEI 


essential conditions of modern constitutional govern- 
ment are here for the first time clearly thought out. 
Turning to the Church, Marsilius anticipates the 
most accurate modern scholarship in defining his terms. 
“ Ecclesia,” in its original sense, denotes the assembly 
of the whole body. This, he points out, is its original 
meaning in Greek politics. In modern times it has 
come to mean either a building, or else the clergy and 
specially the pope and his cardinals. But its true 
Christian meaning, as we see from St. Paul’s speech at 
Miletus, is the “ universitas credentium fidelium.”1 The 
term “spiritual” is properly applied to religious acts 
and religious persons; but he rejects its application to 
property, or to persons in respect of actions relating 
to temporal matters. He then proceeds to discuss the 
fundamental question whether Christ conferred upon 
the Church, and especially on the popes, any power 
over temporal things. The question, he insists, is not 
what Christ cow/d confer (for he is Lord of all), but 
what he zuztended to confer and actually dd confer.” 
Here his arguments are like those of Dante, but fuller ; 
he comes to the same conclusion as Dante, but on 
principles which he derives from St. Augustine’s con- 
ception of Christ’s Kingdom. He strongly and elabor- 


1 The most modern scholarship entirely confirms this, but would add what 
was beyond the knowledge of the fourteenth century, namely, a reference 
to the LXX and its original. 

2 The constitution of Oct. 29, 1327, by which John xx11. condemned the 
errors of Marsilius, directly misstates his position, ascribing to him the 
view that in paying tribute our Lord ‘‘ hoc fecit #2072 condesencsiue e liberali- 
tate siue pietate sed necessitate coactus” (Denzinger, Ixv. 423)! Mars. 
expressly insists that had Christ willed to do so he might have conferred 
any degree of power over ¢emporalia (Dic. I. iv.). 

3 He supports the axiom that Christ came to set upa kingdom not of 
this world by Augustine’s definition of that kingdom: ‘‘quod fideles 






DEFENSOR PACIS 317 


ately works out the subject of evangelical poverty, as 
to which his convictions are very warmly on the 
Franciscan side. The Church as a spiritual body, 
he argues (once more coinciding with Dante), cannot 
possess property. Its material requirements must be 
supplied by the faithful (upon this duty he strongly 
insists), but the regulation of all that remains over is 
for the State, which also must insist upon the clergy 
performing their allotted functions (ze. in spite of 
interdicts, etc.) He then brings into relation his two 
axioms (1) that the clergy owe their institution to 
Christ alone, and (2) that the legislator alone appoints 
all officers in the body politic. They are harmonised 
by aid of the distinction between (1) the right to 
minister in any given place, and (2) the priesthood in 
itself, which comes from GOD by human transmission, 
that is, from Christ as at once GOD and man. _In their 
most essential functions, z.e. that of eucharistic consecra- 
tion and the power of the keys, all priests from the 
pope downwards are alike. He here strongly presses 
the well-known view of Jerome, taking care to point 
out that in the New Testament “presbyter” and 
“bishop” are synonymous terms (he quotes Acts xx., 
Phil. i. 1, and the Pastoral Epistles) He is not 


Christi sunt regnum eius quod modo colitur, modo emitur per sanguinem 
Christi; erit autem a/iguando regnum manifestum,” etc. (I have not 
succeeded in identifying this reference, but it closely resembles some 
passages cited above, Lect. V. sub init.) Marsilius’ thought is also 
expressed by Cesena in his Zz¢/ervae ad omnes Fratres ord. min. (Goldast, 
Mon. ii. 1137, after p. 1342 !) ; he accuses John xxI1I. of following the Jews : 
‘*Quia sicut iam in saepedicto libello qui incipit Quda vir reprobus” (sup. 
p- 304, note 1), ‘‘ipse dicta Danielis prophetae et aliorum prophetarum 
loquentia de regno Christi spirituali et aeterno exponit et intelligit de 
temporali et mundano regno,” etc. etc. 


318 REGNUM DEI 


quite clear on the differentia of the episcopal order; 
from the equality of all priests he glides on to the 
equality of all bishops, quoting Jerome again for the 
principle that all bishops are successors of the Apostles, 
which, he argues, implies that Jerome thought all the 
Apostles equal. 

After the death of the Apostles, then, priests derive 
their priestly character from their ordination, but their 
local appointment from the jfidelium multitudo, and so 
ultimately from the jidelis legislator humanus. For 
example, the Apostles lay hands on the Seven; but 
they leave the choice of the actual persons in the hands — 
of the brethren. 4 

Marsilius here concentrates his argument on the 
origin and powers of the papacy. He quotes the most 
relevant New Testament passages which show that St. 
Peter exercised no jurisdiction over other Apostles, and 
justly argues that the Apostle whom scriptural evidence 
connects with Rome is St. Paul rather than St. Peter. 
He denies any connexion of St. Peter with Rome in the 
New Testament He is on firmer ground when, in~ % 


face of the negative evidence of the Acts (xxviii) and 


Epistle to the Romans, he dismisses as fabulous the 
“legenda” that represents St. Peter’s arrival at Rome 
as prior to that of St. Paul. The true origin of the 
papacy is by ecclesiastical custom. Other Churches 
went to Rome for advice and precedents, just as the 
writer has known other universities apply to that of 


1 Jerome’s views are stated and discussed by Lightfoot, Phz/ppians, 


08 sq., 229 sqq.; Gore, Zhe Church and the Minisiry, 173 sq., 274, etc. 

2 Apparently overlooking the Babylon of 1 Pet. v. 13. . The inferential 
connexion, deduced from Acts xii. 17 (see Harnack, Chronol. i. 244, note), 
was hardly likely to occur to him. 





DEFENSOR PACIS 319 


Paris, without any idea of jurisdiction being implied. 
But hence arose the custom of decretals,! which he 
supposes to be practically coeval with the Church. 
Like Dante he does not divine the truth about the 
decretals of the first four centuries. Marsilius, for 
the convenience of the Church, desires a papacy, but a 
papacy of ecclesiastical appointment.2, Such a pope 
would stand to the whole Church much as does the 
“prince” to the State; but having no pretence to 
divine right, he would lack the boasted flenztudo 
potestatis$ the fruitful source of strife, bloodshed, and 
civil anarchy. The plenztudo potestatis has shown its 
untrustworthiness in the settlement of controversies of 
faith. For the pope may fall into heresy like Liberius, 
or give a wrong decision as “a certain pope” has done 
on the poverty of Christ and his Apostles.‘ 

Marsilius, in agreement with Dante, lays it down that 
nothing is to be propounded for belief as necessary to 
salvation, save what is contained in canonical Scripture, 
or is to be proved thereby. The question of proof and 
interpretation is to be decided by general councils only. 
They alone also can excommunicate,’ canonise, order 
fasts and feasts and the like. But if their decisions are 

1 This is strictly accurate (sara, Lect. VI. p. 236, note I), 

? This was what the Greek Church was prepared to allow in the fifth 
century ; see Concil. Chalced. Can. xxviii., and Bright’s note. 

3 Supra, p. 310, note 1; Gierke, notes 131 and 18. 

4John xxII, (see above, p. 304, note 2). He urges the risk to faith of 
such a pope as Boniface vii. had claimed to be. The claim of the latter 
in the Bull Unam Sanctam, which, with one of his rare outbursts of feeling, 
Marsilius characterises as ‘‘most mischievous of falsehoods,” had sub- 
sequently been declared (by Clement v. in the Brief Meruzt carissimz) not 
to apply to France. Marsilius mercilessly presses the contradiction involved. 


5 Individual bishops may do so, but only if allowed by the legislator 
(supra, Lect. VI. p. 271, note 2). 


320 REGNUM DEI 


to be enforced, the /egislator humanus, who alone has 
the potestas coactiva, must be a party to them. Accord- 
ingly they can only be summoned by the will of 
princes. The emperors, for example, summoned, and 
were present at, the four general councils which once 
for all settled the great controversies of faith. Those 
councils were composed of bishops and clergy alone; 
but the council of the future must answer to the 
changed conditions of the times. The different pro- 
vinces and “notable communities” must be proportion- 
ably represented, and there must be a lay element, like 
the elders of Acts xv. In the primitive Church the 
clergy and the learned were nearly coextensive. But in 
these days, he has known bishops and abbots too 
ignorant to express themselves grammatically, and a 
wholly ignorant youth under twenty, not even in minor 
orders, made by papal favour bishop of a famous and 
populous town. Such men are no fit judges in contro- 
versies of faith. The large number of ignorant bishops 
and clergy makes the need for a lay element in councils 
far greater in these times. The legislator then should 
depute fit priests and laymen, who should be present 
and judge as experts.” In any case, in matters of 
conscience men must not be coerced by civil penalties. 
If a heretic breaks the law, he must be punished for 
breaking it; but not as a heretic. The New Testa- 
ment does not authorise this; and only the precepts 
of the New Testament,—by no means all those of the 

1 «« Elder brethren” is the correct reading (Acts xv. 23, R.V. and Vulg.). 
On the lay element in councils in the fifteenth century, see Gierke, note 
205. 


? He quaintly quotes St. James to prove that this is the duty of the 
learned laity, for, ‘‘ Scienti bonum facere et non facienti, peccatum est illi.” 





re: ew fe eT 


DEFENSOR PACIS 321 


Old Testament,—-are to be observed as necessary to 
salvation. 

The Defensor Pacis, of which the above is a very 
imperfect sketch, is a marvel not only of political and 
scriptural insight, but of sustained and luminous argu- 
ment. No term is employed without careful definition, 
and every step is made by strict method, carefully 
prepared for, and tested by every objection the writer 
can bring to bear upon it. 

His great and lasting achievements are the construct- 
ive theory of the modern State, in which his noble con- 
ception of the “ prince” and his office stands in eloquent 
contrast with the “ Prince” of Macchiavelli; and again 
the negative criticism of the papacy. His conception 
of the Church, moreover, is sound, philosophic, and 
spiritual. His theory of the relation between Church 
and State is open to more objection. Accepting with- 
out question the whole body of medieval dogma, he does 
not foresee the difficulties which liberty of conscience, 
and the inclusion in the State of men of different 
creeds, will import into these relations. He assumes 
the “jfidelis legislator humanus” as a constant and 
fundamental factor in the system. Accordingly start- 
ing out from the substitution of one Augustinian con- 
ception of the Kingdom of Gop for another,—discard- 
ing the conception of that Kingdom as an omnipotent 
Church in favour of the deeper, and more character- 
istically Augustinian interpretation of Christ’s Kingdom 
as his reign per fidem credentium, Marsilius proceeds 
to assume that the citizens of the State will correspond 
to the latter idea; and so, by aid of the assump- 
tion of the fidelis legislator, meets the claims of the 

21 





322 REGNUM DEI 


omnipotent Church with the counter-principle of an 
omnipotent Christian State; omnipotent even, since the 
legislator lies behind the general council, in matters of 
faith. He is not “ Erastian,” for the Church is to him 
a purely spiritual society, whose origin and mission is 
solely from Christ. But in the last resort, power in the 
Church lies with the laity who constitute the “ fidelis 
legislator.” If then the citizens are not at one in 
faith, if the legislator is no longer “ fidelis,” the Mar- 
silian theory of Church and State becomes impossible. 
In these conditions, the tendency of the Defensor Pacis 
is toward the separation of Church and State, the State 
remaining the arbiter of personal and property rights, 
while the Church exists, in the eye of the law, as a 
voluntary contractual society, free to pursue its own 
ends subject to the general law of the land. 

(e) But we are not now concerned with the applica- 
tion of the Marsilian principles to the modern relations 
of religion to the State. What is important to observe 
is that the hierarchical system of the Middle Ages has 
lost its hold upon the greatest thinkers of the opening 
century. That Marsilius in his criticism of the papacy 
represents the deepening feeling of thoughtful men, it 
it is impossible to doubt. In common with Ockham, 
he went beyond its temporal claims, at which Dante’s 
criticism stopped short, and examined its credentials as 
a spiritual office. This was inevitable; for with the one, 
the other stood or fell. The plenztudo potestatis cannot 
be partly denied and partly affirmed.* 


1 Alvarus Pelagius: ‘‘potestas sine pondere numero et mensura” 
(Gierke, note 131) ; also the quotations in Gierke, notes 13, 17-25. This 
is of course involved in the modern doctrine of the ‘‘Societas Perfecta” 
(supra, p. 292, note 1, and zz/ra, p. 344, note 2). 


DIVERGENCE OF IDEALS 323 


If so, Marsilius was right in his theory of the State ; 
for the temporal power of the popes was the direct 
antithesis of the sovereignty of the people. Adrian Iv. 
and Alexander II. might, in their campaign against 
the emperor, encourage popular government in the 
Guelf cities of Northern Italy, but they could have 
permitted it in Rome only at the cost of renouncing 
their own divine right. Dante, Ockham, Marsilius, 
mark the irresistible and irrevocable movement 
of Christian thought. The Church, from Gregory 
VII. onwards, has attempted a mighty task, and the 
result is destructive of the highest ideal of human 
society ; the attempt has failed. The Church has not 
failed, but the attempt to invest her with a certain 
function and character has done so. The conclusion 
is that this function and character are no part of her 
divine commission, that if the Church is to realise her 
character as the Kingdom of Christ upon earth,—and 
that this is her character these men rightly believe,— 
it must be in some other way. 

The growing perception of the contrast between the 
secular wealth and dominion of the Church and the ex- 
ample of Christ and the Apostles is characteristic of the 
century and a half which lies between Arnold of Brescia 
and the Pontificate of John XxII._ It would be a mis- 
take to derive all, perhaps any, of the later movements 
which give utterance and shape to this perception from 
the direct influence of Arnold. He died,and in a sense, 
as a contemporary boasts, his doctrine died with him :— 

“Ecce tuum, pro quo penam, dampnate, tulisti 


Dogma perit, nec erit tua mox doctrina superstes.” } 


1 From the Bergamo poet quoted sufra, Lect. VI. p. 260 sqq., notes, 


324 REGNUM DEI 


But the principles to which Arnold had devoted 
his life were in the air, and were certain to inspire 
others also. Within a few years of his death, Waldes 
sold his goods and gave all he had to the poor, and 
began his great movement of lay-preaching. After 
a partial approval by one pope, the movement was 
condemned by another, and developed an anti- 
ecclesiastical puritanism. In spite of stern suppres- 
sion, and some of the extravagances which repression 
encourages, the sect of the poor men of Lyons, with 
its branch-movements in Piedmont and in the Rhine- 
country, lived on, and coalesced in turn with the 
Hussite and Protestant reactions,2 and it lives to this 
day. In some of its ramifications, it was brought 
back into the Church as a recognised order. The 
béguinages of Ghent and Bruges are the catholicised 
survivals of a society of Waldensian origin which was 
stamped out in the Low Counties by the Inquisition$ 


1 Their poverty, but not their preaching, was approved by Alexander Im. 
at the council of 1179 (supra, p. 264, note). In 1184 they were con- 
demned by Lucius 111. Waldes was wholly unconnected with the Albi- 
genses, a sect of Eastern origin, whose tenets were in part Manichean. 
The persecutions of the thirteenth and fourteenth century tended to confuse 
the two bodies, but they were never really identified. There is no reason 
whatever to regard the Waldensian movement as of greater antiquity 
than Waldes himself. The Waldensian errors, Denzinger, Ixiii. ; see 
an excellent sketch in Moller, Azrchengeschichte, ii. 383-391 ; also Trench, 
Medieval Church Hist., Lect. xvii. 

® For this subject, consult Dieckhoff, de Waldenser in ATA. (Gott. 1851); 
Gindély, Gesch. d. bohm. Bruder (Prag. 1858); Preger on Taborites and 
Waldensians in fourteenth century in Bavarian Academy, 3 cl. XVII. i. 
pp. 1-111 (Taborites a fusion of extremer Hussites with Italo-Bohemian 
Waldensians) ; Palacky’s Geschichte Bohmen’s (Prag. 1867). 

3 The Beguines seem to have originated at Liége, c. 1180; about a 
century later we hear of a society of men (Beghards) at Louvain. M6ller 
(ut supra, 456-469) sketches the history of the movement, every detail 
of which, including the name, is the subject of much debate, 





a ee ee Oy pal 


Decne 





DIVERGENCE OF IDEALS 325 


Before Waldes was dead, Francis of Assisi had 
founded his brotherhood, with a closely similar aim 
but in perfect submission to the Church. Only, as 
we have seen, after his death the more uncompromis- 
ing spirits of the order carry into effect the essential 
antagonism between their ideal and the wealth and 
power of the popes and cardinals! Of all these 
movements, so far as the essential principle of ab- 
solute poverty is concerned, Arnold of Brescia is 
the type. But he also represents, unlike either the 
Waldensians or the Franciscans, the spirit of muni- 
cipal self-government, stimulated by the growing 
importance of the middle-classes in the Lombard 
towns, and associated in Rome with the lingering 
reminiscence of the lost republican idea. This side 
of Arnold’s spirit reappears in Marsilius, whose early 
life in Padua probably prepared him to appreciate 
the political ideas, the outcome of the city life of 
ancient Greece, which he found in the Politics of 
Aristotle. These ideas, once more, had already, in 
Dante, fertilised the expiring idea of the Medieval 
Empire, and laid the foundation of a new conception 
of government which was to supersede the old barren 
strife of Guelf and Ghibelline. The Guelf concep- 
tion of Divine Right, embodied in the papacy, the 
Ghibelline idea of Historical Right, embodied in the 
empire, were to give way to the higher principle of 
law rooted in freedom, and of the essential moral end 
of human society. 


1 The Fraticelli seem to have been in close connexion with the Beghards 
and Beguines; the errors of the latter, condemned by Clement v. (Den- 
zinger, Ixi. A), approach to ‘‘quietism,” while those of the Fraticelli (27d. 
lil.) are not unlike the tenets of the Plymouth Brethren. 


326 REGNUM DEI 


II 


None of the movements which meet in Dante, 
Marsilius, and Ockham represent any revolt against 
the established doctrines of the Church. The de 
Monarchia is certainly a contradiction of the Gregorian 
claim to temporal power, and the Dzalogus and 
Defensor Pacis follow this contradiction to its 
logical result in respect of the external constitution 
of the Church; but no creed nor council had as 
yet committed the Church to any doctrine on 
the subject; the revolt we have been considering 
is not against the medieval system of doctrine, 
but against the medieval system of Church law. 
That both the system in question and the revolt 
against it go back to principles formulated by 
Augustine, is in part due to the logic of history, 
only in part due to conscious dependence upon Aug- 
ustine’s writings. 

It is otherwise with the movements of Wycliffe and 
Hus, which can be touched upon here only in so 
far as they affect the conception of the Church and 
of its relation to the civil power. 

Wycliffe, in his reaction against the power of the 
pope and hierarchy, rests upon the Augustinian idea 
of the Church in its transcendental aspect as the 
numerus praedestinatorum. With him begins the 
strictly theological opposition to the medieval system. 
It is true that he was at first in sympathy with the 
Franciscan and political movement considered in the 
early part of this Lecture. The pope complains of 
him as teaching the condemned errors of Marsilius, 





eo eee | Se ae ell ee 


THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION 327 


and the affinity of some of his leading political and 
ecclesiastical tenets with those of Marsilius and of 
Ockham is conspicuous. But Wycliffe was first and 
foremost a theologian and a schoolman, and his dis- 
tinctive doctrine of the Church is directly due to the 
revival of Augustinianism in Oxford, exemplified in 
the person of Thomas Bradwardine the “ Doctor 
Profundus” of Merton. In fact as compared with 
that of Bradwardine, Wycliffe’s Augustinianism is very 
moderate. He does not, like Bradwardine, object to 
merit de congruo, and he abandons the Augustinian 
condemnation of “natural” morality. Wycliffe and 
Hus both set out from the predestinarian idea as 
the exclusive basis of their conception of the Church, 
but practically fall back on the existing Church 
organisation, only demanding reform of abuses, with 
a view to bring the Church back into correspond- 
ence with their ideal of a Holy Society, marked 
out by the prevalence of Christ's law of Love, 
Humility, and Poverty. With the exception of 
Wycliffe’s rejection of transubstantiation, both he 
and Hus are concerned for the reform of the life 
rather than of the dogmas of the Church. The 
authority of the pope, the validity of the ministry of 
unholy priests, the validity of ecclesiastical censures 
and absolutions if unjustly administered, and of in- 
dulgences for which money was paid, the spuriousness 
of the decretals, all these were questions involving 
far-reaching principles, but in view of the fact that 
the definition and constitution of the Church had not 


? See Rashdall’s article on Wycliffe in Dict. Nat. Biogr., and his Uni- 
versities, ii. 540. 


328 REGNUM DEI 


as yet been laid down by any general council, they 
rank as questions of discipline rather than of doctrine 
properly so called. Wycliffe was, or became in the 
later part of his life, an extremist. But except in 
his exaggerated opposition to clerical endowments + 
he was a sober thinker, and Oxford supported him 
throughout until “Archbishop Arundel’s triumph over 
the University in 1411 sounded the death-knell of 
Oxford Scholasticism.” 2 

Meanwhile the Avignon papacy and the great 
schism were undermining the moral authority of the 
papacy, and strengthening the movement for consti- 
tutional reform ‘of the Church “in its Head and in 
its Members.” The conciliar movement in the early 
fourteenth century was inspired by the idea that 
the Church had drifted from its primitive episcopal 
constitution; men looked for regeneration to a re- 
stored conciliar government, which by practically 
reasserting the council of bishops as the supreme 
authority would bring back the Church to the purity 
of early times. The idea was theoretical—“a pro- 
fessorial Utopia,3—and the attempt to carry it to 
effect was half-hearted. It was found easier at Con- 
stance to depose the rival popes and elect a new 
one, than to restore to working order the constitution 
of the early Church; easier to burn Hus, his safe- 

1 This ‘was the peculiar doctrine of the friars, exploited and brought 
into practical politics by Wycliffe. . . . It was characteristic of those times 
for partisans to ask far more than they expected to get; to lay claim, on 
the ground of some theory, to infinite space when a nutshell was the 
end in view” (Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe, p. 1513; cf. p. 
198 sqq. etc.) 


? Rashdall, Universities, ii. 436, 542. 
8 Harnack, 





THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION 329 


conduct notwithstanding, than to touch the profound 
evils complained of by the German nation.! 

The Council of Basel was foredoomed to failure 
before it met. Its convocation, the unwilling fulfil- 
ment by the pope of an unwilling promise, was soon 
followed by discord between pope and council, which 
finally degenerated into open war. Victory was 
eventually on the side of Eugenius Iv., who was able 
to draw away the more moderate members to his 
own council at Florence, where a hollow peace with 
the Eastern Church invested the papal cause with 
the transient glamour of a sensational triumph. With 
the failure of Basel, the conciliar movement failed 
hopelessly. The councils had asserted their superi- 
ority to the pope, but had not succeeded in giving 
effect to it. All attempts at reform were checkmated, 
and in the two generations which constitute the eve 
of the Reformation the prestige of the papacy stood 
higher than it had stood since the fall of the Hohen- 
staufen. The authority of the popes over kings and 
emperors, as it had been claimed by Gregory VII. and 
Innocent III, was indeed gone for ever; but it re- 
mained as a theoretical claim,? and every attempt 

1 See Mirbt, Quel/en, 101, 102. The Germans pressed urgently for reform 
before the election of a new pope, but were unable to carry their point. On 
the general state of the Church, see Moller (zt supra), 477-480 and refer- 
ences. 

* E.g., see the Bull of Alexander vi. bestowing all ‘‘insulas et terras 
firmas zzventas et inveniendas detectas et detigendas,” west of a line 100 
leagues west of Cape Verde and the Azores, upon Ferdinand and Isabella ; 
the Bull is issued ‘‘motu proprio . . . de nostra mera liberalitate . . 
auctoritate omnipotentis Dei nobis in b. Petro concessa ac uicarius Jesu 
Christi qua fungimur in terris’ (Mirbt, Que//en, 108). To enumerate in- 


stances of deposition of kings (e.g. that of Henry vii. by Paul 111., zézd. 
113 ; 1535) is needless. But it is curious to recall that as lately as 1701 


330 REGNUM DEI 


to cut at its roots by challenging their spiritual 
supremacy had ended in failure. The long series of 
protests, founded upon the principle of Holy Poverty, 
begun by Arnold of Brescia, continued by the Wal- 
denses, the Franciscans, by Dante and Marsilius, by 
Wycliffe and Hus, found their answer in the un- 
disturbed splendour of the papal court of the age of 
the Renaissance. They had proved as unpractical 
as the apocalyptic dreams of Abbot Joachim. The 
imperialist movement was dead, the conciliar move- 
ment defeated and discredited. The reassertion by 
Wycliffe and Hus of the Augustinian transcendentalism 
of an invisible Church had filled Bohemia with war 
and confusion, and had already spent its force; in 
England it had been stamped out by authority. All 
these movements for building up the Church from 
below upon the holiness of its members, forgetful of 
the danger of rooting up the wheat with the tares, 
had failed to appreciate the need of human nature 
for a visible embodiment of the reign of Christ over 
sinful men. They were violent and sweeping, partly 
because they lacked a secure positive footing of con- 
structive principle. That the government of the 
Roman Curia was corrupt and tyrannous, and that 
the constitution of the ancient Church had become 
altered, were convictions shared by all the medieval 
parties of opposition, and by many orthodox Church- 
men besides. But these convictions, true as they 
were, were too purely negative, too tentative in the 
then state of critical knowledge, to lead to anything 


Clement x1. denounces the erection of Prussia into a kingdom without his 
authority as an “‘ audax et irreligiosum facinus” (ézd. No. 136-138). 





THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION 331 


but failure in practice. The general result was despair 
of reformation either in head or in members. The 
evils which Gregory VII. had thought to remedy by 
an omnipotent papacy were still unhealed. But 
while the evils were felt, there was no longer any 
strong impulse toward reform. The pontificate of an 
Innocent VIII. or an Alexander VI. might insult the 
conscience of Christendom, but without challenging any 
attack upon the principles which had triumphed over 
the reforming movements of the age of the Captivity 
and of the schism. 

It is difficult to generalise as to the religious state 
of Europe on the eve of the Reformation. It was an 
age of contradictions, “the age of Savonarola and of 
Macchiavelli” ; an age of declining interest in theology 
coupled with increased interest in both the higher and 
the lower forms of practical religion; an age of Gothic 
decay and Classical revival in architecture-——of the 
revival alike of learning, and of grovelling belief in 
witchcraft,—an age of Christian conquest in Spain, 
of new worlds opening new fields of wealth and adven- 
ture,—of the first beginnings of the great Catholic 
missions, while classical paganism and _ scepticism 


1 As to simony, it is said of a pope in a contemporary epigram :— 


‘© Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum ; 
Emerat ista prius, vendere iure potest.” 


On the whole subject, see Moller (#¢ supra, note 1). That profound cor- 
ruption reigned in the monasteries and among the clergy of the fifteenth 
century is not seriously denied. In Italy, to take one example, the order 
of Camaldoli, which had sent forth Peter Damiani to purify the Church of 
the eleventh century, was found by its general, the learned Ambrogio 
Traversari, to be festering ‘‘ from head to foot” with the very worst of 
evils against which Damiani had contended. See the appalling facts 
disclosed in his Hodocforicon (a description of his visitation A.D. 1431). 


332 REGNUM DEI \ 





flourished in the high places of the Church. It is | 
possible, by judicious insistence upon different classes 
of facts, to represent the age on the one hand as one 
of deep intellectual unsettlement, moral depravation, and 
religious bankruptcy, or on the other, as a time of 
sincere popular religion, coupled with serious thought- 
fulness and enlightenment, all too rudely disturbed 
by the wanton self-will of the inexplicable Luther? 
Perhaps we shall not be far from the mark if we 
recognise that an age when the boundaries of know- 
ledge were suddenly widened, and the resources of life 
rapidly enriched, was marked by progress in religious 
seriousness also, coupled with the moral disorder which 
is the penalty civilisation too frequently pays for a 
loosening of old moorings before it has found the 
new; that the authority of the Church, which under 
the intellectual limitations of the Middle Age had 
scarcely succeeded in holding the best thought of 
the times in allegiance, was still less able to command 


1 See last note. This estimate is too familiar to need much illustration. 
A very impartial sketch is given by Harnack, Dogmengesch. iii. 570-577 ; 
more facts in Moller, ii. 532-539. See also Dr. C. Creighton’s History of 
Epidemics on one painful side of the case. On the need for reform, Lord 
Acton (EHR. Oct. 1890) quotes an interesting letter of Mohler to 
Dollinger: ‘‘ At that time [about 1500] the existing form of the Church 
was really blameworthy in the highest degree, and needed purification. 
The popes had become despots,—arbitrary rulers. Practices in the highest 
degree opposed to Faith and Christian piety had grown to a height. On 
many points Luther was certainly right when he says, of abuses of the 
Roman power, that there everything was purchasable. Tetzel, more- 
over,” etc. etc. On witchcraft, see the extraordinary Bull of Innocent VIII. 
in Mirbt, Quel/en, No. 107. 

? This is the side ably put forward by Father Gasquet in his temperate 
and interesting Eve of the Reformation. He hardly appears to contem- 
plate the possibility of religious motives in Luther or any other Reformer ; 
on the other hand he appears somewhat detached from strictly curialist 
principles. 


THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 333 


the rising intellectual activity of the fifteenth century 
with its command of a larger range of interest and 
knowledge; and that the ideas which had persistently 
asserted themselves through the Middle Ages, and had 
been suppressed by authority rather than answered by 
reason, were certain by the logic of history to demand 
their revenge. The one-sidedness of the Reformation 
was the unavoidable reaction from the one-sidedness of 
the system which embodied itself in the medieval 
papacy. 

Not by the arbitrary wilfulness of one man or of 
many, but by the sure process of development, the 
interpretation of the Kingdom of Christ on earth in the 
form of an omipotent Church had broken down; the 
Reformation only gave violent expression to a fact 
which stands revealed already in the age of John XXII, 
that the Gregorian ideal is henceforth not the ideal of 
a united Christendom, but the ideal of a party. 


III 


The three questions! left open by Augustine, 
questions upon the answer to which depended the 
realisation of his thought of the lmperium im Ecclesia, 
had been answered by the medieval Church, but the 
answer was no longer adequate to the moral needs of 
mankind. The constitution of the Church as a papal 
monarchy had proved a source of disunion, it had in- 
volved consequences against which the enlightened 
conscience had revolted, and which no healthy govern- 
ment could allow. The absolute validity of Church 

1 See above, Lect. V, sub fin, 


334 REGNUM DEI 


censures had been asserted until excommunication fell 
into contempt, and even saintly princes refused to en- 


force it The relation between the Augustinian 
doctrine of grace and the purely hierarchical idea of 
the Church had not been faced,—the two came out in 
hopeless conflict, first in the movements of Wycliffe 
and Hus, afterwards in the incurable schism of the 
sixteenth century. 

(a) The storm of the Reformation withdrew more 
than half Europe from the allegiance of Rome; but 
the loss was not permanent. The medieval system 
was too deeply rooted to lack recuperative power, and 
the questions in dispute were not so simple as to admit 
of a one-sided solution. Europe was _ henceforth 
divided into two religious parties,? corresponding to 
two aspects of a question on which seriously religious 
minds were inevitably divided. The Counter-Reforma- 
tion was as inevitable a reaction as the Reformation 
itself. On one side of it—regarded as a reformation 
of the Church—by the tardy reform of many of the 
practical evils which had given right and reason to the 
Reformers, it drew forth the best moral energies of those 
who sided with the old system. The Council of Trent, 
from their point of view, marks a beneficent epoch in 
the ecclesiastical life of Europe. On its other side, the 


-“ 


1 Supra, p. 271, note 2. 


2 That, quite apart from the details of doctrine or worship, the peoples — 


of Europe were henceforth divided into two broad parties, is as obvious as 
is the side on which England ranged itself. On which side justice, liberty, 
and enlightenment found their principal support, or whether these may not 
be balanced by assets on the other side, are questions on which the repre- 
sentatives of either may not agree. But that either side has the monopoly 
of practical religion, or of moral ideas, is a supposition now happily con- 
fined to the blindest partisans in both camps, 





; 
; 


‘ 
. 


THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 335 


Counter-Reformation was a great party campaign to 
reconquer from Protestantism the ground lost by the 
Latin Church. This movement, again, drew forth 
boundless energy, devotion, and organising power, 
seconded, in the Protestant camp, by the inward 
decline of religious enthusiasm, and the many dis- 
sensions which appeared as the first energy of the 
Reformation had spent itself. For a time the return 
current set strongly; after a while it in its turn had spent 
its force, and for some two centuries the ecclesiastical 
geography of Europe has been substantially unchanged. 
Both as a movement of reform and of aggression the 
Counter-Reformation has moulded the character of the 
Roman Catholic Church of modern times, The naive 
picturesque abuses, the naive piety of the Middle Age, 
are exchanged for an organised regularity and a 
devotion coloured by the sense of a controverted 
position. The sancta simplicitas of the medieval 
repression of heresy has given place to a persistent 
policy which, while asserting in theory the right to 
persecute, rarely puts it in practice, but carries on the 
campaign in literature, education, and social work. 


1 This is true, if we except the signal atrocities of the sixteefth century, 
especially in the Latin countries, the dragonnades, and the banishment of 
whole populations, to which Salzburg, Tirol, etc., owe their religious homo- 
geneity of to-day. As to theory, see the Sy//adus of Pius Ix., No. 24, and 
his Encyclical Quanta Cura, which have behind them the influence of the 
Roman Jesuits, who argue that the Church, comprising men with bodies, 
must be able to apply bodily means, as St. Paul threatens to do (1 Cor. iv. 
21, which they appear to take literally ; Tarquini 2st. Zur. Eccl. p. 41). 

2 The subtle, but always perceptible difference between the characteristic 
products of post-Tridentine and of medieval religious life is analogous to 
that which distinguishes ‘‘ rococo” from medieval architecture. The 
*‘rococo”’ style is often most effective, and personally I admire many 
examples of it ; but it does not, like the ‘‘ Gothic,” adequately express the 
highest spirit of the age to which it belongs, 


336 REGNUM DEI 


The Counter-Reformation starts from the Council of 
Trent, in which the Church, by crystallising into dogma 
almost all the disputed points of medieval doctrine, 
irrevocably closed the door to any synthesis of the 
opposing half-truths which divided the best minds of 
the sixteenth century. But there were three questions, 
all-important in their bearing upon the question with 
which we are concerned, which the Council left open to 
debate. 

(a) First there was the old insoluble question of 
the relation between the theory of the Church and the 
Augustinian doctrine of grace. What was to be the 
authority of Augustine in the reformed Roman Com- 
munion? The council left this an open question, the 
Catechismus Romanus drawn up after the council re- 
presents a moderate but decided Augustinianism.! But 
from the end of the sixteenth century onwards the cause 
of Augustinianism has been a losing one. Baius of 
Louvain and Jansen of Ypres taught what Augustine 
had taught them, but only to incur condemnation, and 
light a flame of controversy which it took three 
centuries to bring under control. The subtle semi- 
Pelagianism favoured by the Jesuits gradually prevailed, 
the dogma of 1854* symbolises its triumph, and it 


1 Substantially that of Thomas Aquinas, on whose doctrine as com- 
pared with Augustine’s see Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Pre- 
destination. ati a, 

2 Mozley, comparing the Thomist and the post-Tridentine doctrine of 
grace, puts the case in strong, but not exaggerated words: ‘ Having 
excluded Augustinianism from the pale of tolerated opinion, the Church 
of Rome is obliged to prove that S. Augustine was not Augustinian” 
(p. 226, note; cf. 234). The Thomist doctrine is so far decidedly Augus- 
tinian as to involve the direct negative of the dogma of 1854. Thomas 
maintains (Swmma, Il. xxvii 2 ad 2), ‘‘dicendum quod si nunquam 
anima Virginis fuisset contagio originalis peccati inguinata, hoc derogaret 





THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 337 


may be doubted whether the repristination by Leo 
xIll. of the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas will 
extend to bringing back his modified Augustinian 
doctrine of Grace to theological supremacy. 

(8) A second question was that of the constitution 
of the Church. The centuries between Augustine and 
the Council of Trent had settled this as far as the divine 
right of the papacy was concerned. But there still 
remained the leaven of the conciliar movement which 
had closed the great Schism. Have bishops a divine 
right independently of the popes, or do they rule as 
their delegates “by grace of the Apostolic See”?+ 
And is the Pope above the Council or the Council 
above the Pope? These questions, really involved 
in the practical reforms of the third period of the 
council,? were not brought to an issue there, but were 


- dignitati Christi secundum quam est universalis omnium Salvator,” and 
further on, art. 6, he explains that her purification before dz7¢h is simply 
on a level with that recorded (as was inferred from Jer. i. 5; Luke i. 15) 
of Jeremiah and John Baptist, her pre-eminent privilege consisting in her 
exemption from all, even venial, actwa/ sin, whereas they were protected 
from mortal sin only. Pius 1x., in 1854, defines, as a doctrine revealed 
by God, that the blessed Virgin “‘z primo itnstanti suae conceptionis 
fuisse, s¢zgu/ari omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuitu meritorum 
Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpae labe 
praeservatam immunem.” 

1 A modern formula in the ‘‘style” of a diocesan bishop. I have not 
observed it in any pre-Reformation document, though it is claimed 
(Kirchenlexicon, s.v. Bischof) that it can be traced back to the eleventh 
century. If so, the traces are very faint. The Vatican Council of 1870 
(Const. de Eccles. 1. iii.), while recognising the direct divine source of 
episcopal jurisdiction, claims for the pope an ordinary and immediate 
jurisdiction gzae est vere episcopalis in all matters and over every member 
of the Church. Those who assert that it is not ordinary and direct as 
regards omnes et singulos, or who deny the Plenttudo fotestatis, are 
anathematised. 

2 Ranke, Pofes, i. 336 sqq.; Mendham, Covncil of Trent, for a précis 
of the debates. 

22 


338 REGNUM DEI 


evaded. The answer was first settled in 1870. 
Once again, as to tradition. The council decided 
that tradition is of equal authority with Scripture. 
But is tradition to be understood in the old Vincentian 
sense, admitting the appeal from the quod ubique to 
the guod semper, or is the guod ubiqgue enough by 
itself? And if so, the bishops being under the 
episcopal rule! of the Pope, is the Pope himself the 
ultimate and decisive vehicle of tradition? Here 
again the council decided nothing; the question was 
closed only in 1870.2 Accordingly, internal as well 
as external pressure compelled the Church of the 
Counter-Reformation to devote its attention to the 
completion of the theory of the Church, which now 
otherwise than in the Middle Ages occupies a place 
of its own in the topics of dogmatic theology. 

(y) Thirdly, there has been the question of the 
administration of the moral law. The enforcement in 
the Middle Ages of the universal obligation of con- 
fession was founded upon the assumption that grave 
sin after baptism can be forgiven by sacramental 
absolution only.2 Confession must be universal because 


1 Supra, note 1. The Alenztudo potestatis in theory, the imperative 
necessity to a bishop of powers granted by the pope for short periods 
only, and renewed or suspended at the pope’s discretion, in practice, 
make any conflict of powers impossible. 

2 Const. de Eccl. 1. iv. end: The pope’s definitions ex cathedra are ‘‘ ex 
sese, non autem ex consensu ecclesiae, irreformabiles.” 

3 Thom. Aq. Summa, Suppl. vi. I and 6, viii. 1 (from the commentary 
on the fourth book of the Sentences). Practically the same view in Pet. 
Lomb. Set. iv. But Peter Damian, in his sermon (69) on the twelve 
Sacraments, while including sacvram. confessionts, has no word as to absolu- 
tion (but he also omits the Eucharist from his list !); he adds, ‘‘in hac 
uirtute caligant oculi pluximorum.” Arnold at his execution is urged to 
confess to a priest ‘‘ more érudentum” (ut supra, p. 262, note 2). 





{ 
. 
. 
| 

j 


THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 339 


absolution is necessary for all. But the universality of 
confession had the effect of giving a new prominence 
to the direction of consciences as the function of the 
priesthood. Morality became a thing not only to be 
inculcated and enforced by the correptio of the Christian 
Society, but to be actually administered by the clergy, 
in whose hands the decision of the details of moral 
conduct, the decision in detail of the daily problems of 
moral action for every faithful Churchman, must hence- 
forth be lodged. In the Middle Ages, when the rule of 
the Church had no serious rival, this raised no very 
difficult problem. The departments of conduct were 
mapped out, and the acknowledged principles of 
Christian ethics were applied to them. But when 
Europe became divided into two rival camps, and the 
problem arose of preventing the spread of Protestant- 
ism, and of reclaiming the ground lost to it in its first 
period of vigour, the question had to be faced of the 
extent to which moral strictness was to be insisted 
upon, or on the other hand relaxed in order to retain 
as many as possible in their allegiance to the authority 
of the Church. 

Briefly, the system known as probabilism, ze. the 
doctrine that, in order to be justified in acting on the 
less safe side in a moral alternative, it is not necessary 
to be supported by a preponderance of reasons, but 

1 This was specially necessary in dealing with persons of influence. Even 
Loyola, who at first wished his Fathers to accept no court appointments, 
afterwards gave way, and remonstrated with Father Polanco, confessor to 
Duke Cosimo de Medici, for disturbing the duke and duchess with incon- 
siderate counsel, instead of accommodating himself to their wishes. 
Cardinal Casini (1713) accuses confessors of dealing strictly with the 


common sort, mildly with the great. See Dollinger-Reusch, Moralstrettig- 
heiten in d. rimisch-katholischen Kirche, i. pp. 101, 116. 


340 REGNUM DEI 


sufficient to have some reason for doubting the obliga- 
tion to act on the safer side,) has been the means of 
establishing an accommodating scheme of practical 


ethics in the accepted moral theory of the Roman 


Church. The principle “Licet sequi opinionem prob- 
abilem” is the reversal, in the sphere of moral 
practice, of Butler’s axiom that “probability is the 
guide of life.” The system was introduced late in the 
sixteenth century, and in two generations, in spite of 
grave and strongly expressed objections,? it had gained 


1 In a case of doubt as to the lawfulness or obligation of some action, the 
course which is ‘‘legi favens” is recommended by the ofzzio tutior, the 
course /ibertati favens, by the minus tuta (e.g. 1 Cor. viii. 8). Again, in 
such cases, where neither ‘‘ opinion” is certa, each of the two alternatives 
is in some degree probabiziis. The two may be aegue probabiles, or one 
may be probabilior. Now to (1) insist that the ze¢zo7 must always be acted 
on, even if the wzzns tata be the probabzilior, is ‘‘ extreme rigorism,” and 
in fact opposed to common sense. The contrary principle (2) that the 
minus tuta may be followed if probabzlior, agrees in substance with the 
principle of Butler referred to in the text. If the two “ opinions” are 
aegue probabiles, on the same principle the zw¢zor must be acted upon. This 
is what is known as frodabi/iorism. Probabilists call it rigorism. But 
others hold (following the Tirolese Eusebius Am Ort) that (3) when ‘‘ prob- 
ability” is eguaZ on either side, the zs tuta may be followed: aeguz- 
probabilism ; while (4) probabilism maintains that the mms tuta may be 
followed even when wznus probabiliis. If it is required that the mznus uta 
shall be zearly egual in probability, we have an approach to (3); if merely 
that it be vere ac solide probabtlis, probabilism proper; if we are to be 
satisfied with an opinion ‘¢evzzzter or dubie probabilis, the result is /ax 
probabilism, Lastly, the ‘‘ probability”? may be based on the merits of 
the case: probabélitas intrimseca, or upon the authorities adducible on 
either side: probabilitus extrinseca (Dollinger-Reusch, i. pp. 5-7). 

2 Many of these are quoted in Déllinger-Reusch ; ¢.g. Mabillon says 
of its representatives: ‘‘ Quorum moralis theologia bonos mores pessimo 
veneno iam diu corrupit.” De Rancé, the founder of La Trappe: ‘‘ The 
moral teaching of most of them is so corrupt, their principles so contrary to 
the holiness of the gospel . . . that nothing pains me more than to see my 
name used to sanction views which I abominate with all my heart.” Con- 
tenson, a brilliant Dominican who died in 1674 only 33 years old: 
“Nothing could be devised more convenient or welcome to the morals of 
this age, ‘he most corrupt in the memory of man.” Another Dominican 








’ 
3 
= 

1 
§ 


THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 341 


almost universal acceptance, especially in the Jesuit 
order. By aid of the principle of “extrinsic prob- 
ability,” ze. the decision of doubts, not by weighing 
the moral principles involved but the number and 
repute of authorities quoted on one side or the other, 
the system of Probabilism undoubtedly worked great 
havoc in the moral life of Christendom. Its funda- 
mental axiom, “ Lex dubia non obligat,” interpreted by 
the aid of extrinsic probability, made the evasion of 
almost every moral and ecclesiastical precept possible.1 
The shock of the Provincial Letters, although the Letters 
themselves were condemned, told in the highest 
quarters of the Church. Alexander VII. and especially 
Innocent XI. set themselves to stem the rising tide of 
laxity. Innocent condemned a large number of lax 
principles,” and his policy produced one permanent 
result. Probabilism was banished for ever from the 
sphere of ecclesiastical duty. The precepts of the 
Church are to be enforced in their strict sense, and 
can no longer be explained away. But it was not so 
easy to achieve the same result with regard to merely 
moral obligations. Innocent attempted indeed a drastic 


describes Probabilism as ‘‘ars cum Deo cavillandi” (Déllinger-Reusch, i. 


Pp. 43, 79, note, 113, 112; see also pp. 36, 95 sq., 105 sq., 263 sq., 
etc.). 

1 Tt became, as one of the school boasted, more easy to confess sins than 
to commit them. Bishop Caramuel, whom even Liguori calls ‘‘ the laxest 
of the lax,” profanely pointed to the Theatine probabilist Diana with the 
words, ‘‘ Ecce Agnus Dei qui ¢o//t peccata mundi” (Kirchenlexicon, s.v.). 
Of Caramuel’s seventy-seven folios, only one tract is on the index, and 
that because he accused Fagnanus of Jansenism (Déllinger-Reusch, i, 
123, note). 

2 The common editions of the Decrees of Trent contain in the Appendix 
the condemned propositions of Baius, Jansen, Quesnel, etc. ; but for the 
condemned theses of the lax school it is necessary to go to Denzinger, 
Enchiridion, or to the larger works on Moral Theology, ¢.g. Lehmkuhl. 


342 REGNUM DEI 





remedy, namely, the extirpation of Probabilism in the c 
Jesuit order itself. He brought to Rome the learned 
Spanish Jesuit Thyrsus Gonzalez, whom his experience 
as a mission preacher had converted from Probabilism 
by forcing him to realise its deplorable effect upon lay 
morality. Innocent succeeded in securing the election 
of Gonzalez as General of the Order, and impressed 
upon him his mission to save the order from the 
precipice down which it was rushing1 But Gonzalez 
was unequal to the task. The steady opposition of the 
assistants and of the whole spirit of the Order made it 
impossible for him even to publish his book against the 
objectionable doctrine. At last it saw the light in a 
remote corner of Bavaria, but every copy of it has 
apparently disappeared.2 After years of fruitless 
struggle, Gonzalez lost his mental faculties, and died a 
broken man. But meanwhile the general judgment of 
the Church was increasingly strong on the side of the 
stricter morality. Till late in the eighteenth century 
this wholesome tendency gained the upper hand. 
But the French Revolution frightened the Catholic 
powers and the princes of the Church back into 
the camp of the Jesuits, and the influence of St. 

1 Gonzalez says: ‘‘ Cum Innocentius XI. mihi dixisset, me factum fuisse 
Generalem in illum finem, ut Societatem averterem a praecipitio in quod 
ruere videbatur” . . . (Ddllinger-Reusch, 113, note). It may be neces- 
sary to warn the English reader that the position of Gonzalez is quite 


wrongly stated by Sohm in his very able and suggestive Oz¢Jines of Church 
fiistory (Eng. trans.). 

2 Tractatus succinctus de recto usu opinionum probabilium, Dillingen, 
1690. Four years later, he published at Dillingen his Fandamentum 
Theologiae moralis, in which he slightly modified the statement of his case. 
The history of Gonzalez is told at immense length by Déllinger-Reusch, i. 
120-273, with documents in support in vol. ii. The story is full of interest 
in its details for those who desire to follow up the subject of Probabilism. 


THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 343 


Alfonso Liguori! regained for Probabilism more than all 
the ground it had lost. Here if ever is a case of the better 
judgment of the Church being overborne by the force of 
irresistible tendencies. Discredited and fairly argued 
down, the cause of the laxer morality yet triumphed in 
the end. Popes and saints strove to suppress it, the 
lay mind rejected it, it seemed driven finally beneath 
the ground. But in spite of all, the turbid waters of 
Probabilism surged up again, and the elevation of St. 
Alfonso to the rank of a Doctor of the Church makes 
any prospect of a change in the tide almost hopeless. 
(6) The result is in reality due to the logic of facts, 
the inward coherence of ideas which has triumphed 
over all endeavours to sever them. Extreme curialists, 
like Bellarmine, may have objected to Probabilism, 
Augustinians as sincere as Christian Lupus of Ypres ? 
may have extolled the ultramontane theory of Church 
government and tradition, the first probabilist may 
have been a member of the order? specially pledged 
to the Thomist and Augustinian doctrine of grace. But 
such facts do not modify the broad general truth 
that the three controversies we have referred to have 


_ 1 The work and character of this extraordinary man (1696-1787) are 
described by Déllinger-Reusch, i. 356-476. Well-worn as the subject is, 
the English reader will find much that is new and instructive in their dis- 
cussion, based on a thorough mastery of the sources. Liguori, tortured all 
his life by scruples as to his exact position as a moralist, professed, on the 
whole, aequi-probabilism, but was at heart a thorough probabilist, and is 
claimed as such by the modern probabilists, Marc, Lehmkuhl, etc. His 
enormous, but hopelessly uncritical, industry has done more than any other 
one cause to give to the characteristically modern elements in Roman 
Catholicism a secure hold in the current teaching of the Church. In 1871 
Pius 1x. proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church. 

2 His self-chosen epitaph, ‘‘ Natura filius irae,” etc., in Hurter, Momen- 
clator, 5.v. 
’ The Dominican Barth, de Medina in 1577 (Dollinger-Reusch, i. 29). 


344 REGNUM DEI 


ranged on either side substantially the same influences 
and the same combatants. The cause of constitu- 
tionalism in Church government and of the appeal to 
history 1 as the authentic criterion of tradition has also 
been the cause of the Augustinian doctrine of Grace 
and of the stricter moral principles, while on the other 
side the cause of papal absolutism, of the less rigid 
doctrine of grace, and of the laxer morality, is one and 
the same. This cause is the cause of the great Jesuit 
order, which under Pius Ix., by the dogmas of 1854 
and of 1870, and by the elevation of St. Alfonso to the 


rank of a Doctor of the Church, triumphed all along — 


the line. The cause is one and the same, because in 
all three questions alike there is involved the simple 
issue of the two alternative conceptions of the Kingdom 
of Christ on earth as embodied in the Christian Society. 
The Jesuit conception of the Church as a Societas Per- 
fecta,—a Society, that is, which has at its disposal, by 


1 Looking over the enumeration of the Church historians of modern 
times, say as given by Card. Hergenrdther in the Zzn/eztung to his 
Church History, the impression is irresistible that in the Roman com- 
munion, apart from the collectors of material such as Baronius, Raynaud, 
Petavius, etc., the greatest names are with hardly an exception on the side 
which lost the day in 1870. Natalis Alexander, Fleury, Tillemont (per- 
haps the greatest of all), and in the nineteenth century Hefele and Déllinger. 
Hergenroéther remarks justly in his conclusion, ‘‘Wie der Historiker 
Theologe, so musz auch der Theologe Historiker sein” ; this is suggestively 
illustrated by Lord Acton’s closing verdict on Ddllinger, that probably no 
historian has ever owed more to Theology, nor any theologian owed more 
to History (Zug. Hist. Rev., Oct. 1890). 

? This doctrine (referred to supra, pp. 214, 257, 292, note I, 322, note 1, 
etc.) is the characteristic and keystone of the modern Jesuit conception of the 
Church. (I have not met with it in any treatise earlier than the nineteenth 


century, nor in any non-Jesuit work, except in the Sy//abws of Pius 1X. ~ 


No. 19: ‘‘ Ecclesia non est uera Perfectague Societas,” etc.). The prin- 
ciple, however, is simply that of the Church as a world-State in the 
Gregorian sense (cf. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, p. 19, 





THE COUNTER-REFORMATION 345 


divine right, all resources of government, and depends 
for their unrestricted employment upon no other power, 
—a Society absolutely complete in itself, resembling 
earthly kingdoms in this, but differing from them in its 
freedom from their limitations by virtue of its distinctive 
and paramount aim,—this conception of the Church 
exalts submission to external authority as the supreme 
and all-important demand of Christian ethics,! sacrifices 
everything to this, and looks with disfavour upon the 
distinctively Pauline doctrines which make the faith 
of the individual Christian the spring of moral initiative 
and the root of responsibility to Gop. A new legalism? 
is the result of a new appreciation of obedience to 


and notes 20, 49, 51, 332, 311). It is the product of juristic or political, 
not of theological thought. Its ultimate source is Aristotle’s definition of 
the State as xowwvla ré\evor . . . mdono exovoa mépas Tio avrapKelac 
(Pol, 1. ii, 8), which is reproduced by Thomas Aquinas (Szmma, 1M, 112¢, 
xe. 3 ad 3) without any reference to the Church. The latter application 
(contrast svfrva, p. 226, note I) is worked out into its most extreme conse- 
quences by the authoritative school of Roman Jesuits represented by 
Tarquini (Juris Ecclesiastict publict institt., ed. 4, Rome, 1875) and 
Palmieri (Zract. de Romano Pontifice, ed. 2, Prato, 1891). By a Soctetas 
Perfecta is meant one “‘ quae est in semetipsa completa, adeoque media ad 
suum finem obtinendum sufficientia in semetipsa habet”; moreover it 
follows ius esse soctetati iudicandi de mediorum necessitate,” except 
** where the error is manifest and incontrovertible” [who is to judge as to 
this?]. If this leads to conflicts with civil authority, so much the worse 
for the latter. But if men were good, no conflict would arise, for the civil 
society would recognise its proper subordination to the Church (Tarquini). 
In fact the principle of Zmperium in gremio ecclesiae (supra, p. 214) is 
pushed so far as to leave the Church the only Societas Perfecta on earth. 

1 This is a very real legacy of nominalism to the Counter-Reformation 
(seepra, p. 311, note 1). 

? The essence of legalism appears to underlie the very categories of the 
moral theology developed under this system. The ever-recurring antithesis 
of opinion /egi favens and /zbertati favens carries us back to a conception 
of ‘‘law” as a factor in the moral life (id véuov, Rom. vi. 14, vii. 6), and 
above all to a conception of ‘‘liberty” (Rom. vi. 22, viii. 15; Gal. v. 1; 
I Cor. iii. 17, etc.), wide as the poles from the factors of the Christian life 
as conceived by St. Paul. 





346 REGNUM DEI 


/ spiritual rulers as the essence of Christian morality, and 
/ legalism, in this case as in all others, by resting all 
“duties on an external motive, shifts the incidence of 
the law from the moral to the positive! The principle 
Lex dubia non obligat, inapplicable now to the precepts 
of the Church, finds wide application to duties purely 
moral, and the principle of probadzlitas extrinseca com- 
pletes the process. Objectionable, and tainted with 
moral scepticism,” as the whole system taught by the 
Liguorian handbooks of morals must ever appear to 
those who compare it with the ethics of St. Augustine 
and St. Paul, it is none the less inexorably consequent 
upon the conception of the Kingdom of Christ upon 
earth which is involved in the modern theory of the 
Church as a Societas Perfecta. That this conception 
has its roots in the Middle Ages, in the principles of 
Gregory vil. for which his successors fought so con- 
sistently and with so much success, is of course true? 
But the history of the Middle Age itself shows how 
subversive it is of the divinely-appointed functions of 
States and rulers, how inadequate it is to the moral 
and social ideals which no less than itself owe their 

origin to Christian instinct and reflexion. 
To have learned nothing from Christian experience, 


Volkes (ed. 2, § 28), ‘‘das Leben unter dem Gesetze.” 

2 Because the interest is centred not on character, nor indeed on moral 
conduct Zer se, but upon the formal principle of compliance with law : 
(supra, p. 311, note 1). Contenson (in his 7heologia mentis et cordis, ut i 
supra, Pp. 340, note 1) speaks of the probabilists as substituting ‘‘ pro i 
Christi disciplina Pyrrhonis schola.” A demonstration of the truth of 
Probabilism appears to be nowadays an indispensable chapter of the 4 
prolegomena to any Roman Catholic treatise on Moral Theology. 

5 See above, p. 252, note 1, and 273, note I, ; 


1 Compare the very interesting section of Schiirer, Gesch. d, Jiidischen 
‘ 


~~ a 


CHRISTIAN UNITY 347 


to have elaborated into a consistent theory a system 
which involves the condemnation as abnormal and 
monstrous! of all the dearly-bought liberties upon 
which what is best in modern civilisation has been 
built,—rights of conscience, rights of self-government, 
the freedom of learning and science,? the enlarged 
moral aim of Society and the State,—cannot, one 
would hope, be a final result. We must believe that 
the Church can and ought to effect a reconciliation— 
understanding those terms in their best sense—with 
progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation, and our 
sympathy should be generously extended to those 
numerous and loyal sons of the Roman Communion 
who cherish that belief and work patiently toward its 
realisation in the distant future. 


IV 


The Reformation has been accused, with some show 
of reason, of sacrificing the unity of the moral and 
religious life of Europe in its impatience of abuses 
which the Church might have reformed from within. 


1 Tarquini’s view of modern history is that Christ has punished the 

sovereigns of Europe (for imposing constitutions upon the Church) by 
allowing their subjects to impose constitutions upon ¢hem. ‘‘ Non penitus 
tamen,” for the Church has ‘‘eorum [se. Principum] caussam ultro 
suscepit,” etc. etc. (p. 160 sq.). 
- 2 The Sy//abus condemns (No. 12) the proposition that ‘the decrees of 
the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregations zv:fede the free progress 
of science”; but had the lesson of Galileo been completely learned by 
1864? 

3 Syllabus, No. 80. The ardent desire of many evidently sincere Roman 
Catholics for this reconciliation is finding manifold utterance at the present 
day ; the volume of opinion will probably not diminish, and no generous 
mind will wish it anything but increasing influence. 


348 REGNUM DEI 


But the history of the Middle Ages, with the slow but 
sure divergence of the highest ideals which that history 
reveals, shifts the accusation further back. It falls 
upon no one man, on no one group of men, hardly 
even upon the papacy as an institution; but rather on 
the causes which made the growth of that institution, 
and of reaction against it, equally inevitable. So far 
as the diverging streams can be traced back to a 
definite point of parting, it is in the person of St. 
Augustine. But this fact again is due to his many- 
sided idiosyncrasy, which enabled more of the richly 
diverse elements of Christian thought and feeling to 
find expression in him than can coexist in the gener- 
ality of men. The Christian religion, and the Christian 
character, is many-sided and capable of development 
in endless varieties of harmonious type. That their 
harmony is to be maintained by external authority was 
the presupposition—a natural one—of the medieval 
system, a presupposition upon which was founded an 
attempt that failed. As a result, Christendom has 
become divided into parties whose separation has all the 
appearance of being permanent and incurable. But, 
hurtful as is such a state of things to the external influ- 
ence of the Church, we must look below the surface to 
measure justly its effect upon the true Reign of Christ 
on earth. As Dante has said, “ Forma ecclesia vita 
Christi.” And history warns us that where any uniform 
system reigns undisturbed and uncriticised, the flame 
of the Christian life is apt to burn low. Diversity, as 
well as unity, has its benefits and blessings. The 
Reformation, let us allow, got rid of the evils of a false 
unity only to exchange them for those of an irrecon- 






* 


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CHRISTIAN UNITY 349 


cilable diversity. We cannot hope for any lasting 
good from a mere reversal of this exchange. But in 
the far future it may be given to our children’s children 
to see the dawn of a unity which shall include all that 
is lasting and healthy in the diversities of to-day, and 
without loss or injury to truth, uphold to mankind the 
example of the whole body of Christ’s faithful people 
bound together in His common Love. 





Bee eine VLE 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MODERN 
THOUGHT, LIFE, AND WORK 


351 









Forma ecclesiae Vita Christi. 


MN What we have to choose then in the days of choice is 
It pep SR the character of the bond which is to make our acti 
Be eS Much may remain dark to us ; but the purposes of life 

Pe powerful direction the moment we believe that the one 
life is that Jesus Christ, Gop’s Son, our Lord, who has 1 
to us from the first in the Creed. No other single way, ca 
the whole nature and life of man, has yet been discov 
tend to draw us down rather than lift us up. 





352 





LECTURE cpr! 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN MODERN THOUGHT, 
LIFE, AND WORK 


Behold the days come, saith the Lor, that I will make a new covenant 
with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: . . . [and] this 
shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After 
those days, saith the Lorn, I will put my law in their inward parts, and 
write it in their hearts ; and will be their Gon, and they shall be my people. 
And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his 
brother, saying, Know the Lorp: for they shall all know me, from the 
least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lorp: for I will forgive 
their iniquity and remember their sins no more.—JER. xxxi. 31, 33, 34. 


IT was part of the strength as well as of the weakness 
of the Reformation that it did not set up a system of 
thought as complete as that which it displaced. In an 
age of vehement reaction it was easier to see what was 
wrong than what was wholly right. The Reformation 
broke up—or rather registered the break-up of—a 
grand and comprehensive concrete interpretation of the 
earthly Reign of Christ; but it put no structure in its 
place that could compare with it in concreteness, or in 
grandeur of scale. Had it done so, the result must 
have been premature and therefore precarious,—as pre- 
carious a substitute for the medieval system as was the 
Protestant Scholasticism of the seventeenth century for 
the handiwork of the medieval School. The very 
failure of the Reformation in this respect left open the 
road to constructive thought in future and more favour- 
able times, when the exigencies of theological warfare 
a3 


Kk 


354 REGNUM DEI 


should give place to a serener outlook upon life, aided 
by a knowledge of the universe, a historical sense, and 
a command of method and material for the study of 
Scripture and of history far beyond the resources of 
the sixteenth century. 

We look in vain, accordingly, to the Reformation 
period for any fruitful or epoch-marking conception of 
the Kingdom of GoD. Such as they are, the utter- 
ances on the subject are of interest mainly in their 
bearing upon what were then really urgent and prac- 
tical questions, those namely of the constitution and 
nature of the Church of Christ. 

It is a commonplace of controversy that the Re- 
formers, pressed with their separation from the visible 
Church, originated (whether for better or for worse) the 
idea of a true and invisible Church, in comparison with 
which the visible Church was treated as of little 
account. But this, like some other commonplaces, is 
true only to a very limited extent. Firstly, the idea of 
an invisible Church, in so far as it has really been held, 


is,as we have already seen, nothing but the Augustinian ~ 


idea of the Communio Sanctorum, sharpened by an 
exclusive insistence upon the predestinarian doctrine 
which Augustine certainly held, though not in the 
isolation in which it appears in more modern thinkers. 
This applies, as we saw, to Wycliffe, and in some 
degree to Hus also. Of the Reformers, it applies fully 
to Zwingli alone? In opposition to Luther, Zwingli 
held that State and Church having but one aim, the 


1 Supra, p. 326 sq. 
2 See the useful study of this subject in Ritschl, Gesammelte Aufsdtze, p. 
68 sqq., and Lehre d. Rechtfertigung u. Versohnung (ed. 2), iii. 267 sqq. 





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THE REFORMATION 355 


visible Church merges in the Christian State which 
represents the Kingdom of GOD on earth, Regnum 
Christi est externum. The Church, as distinct from 
the State, was to Zwingli simply the invisible xumerus 
praedestinatorum. Zwingli’s conception of a purely 
invisible Church influenced some of the later Lutheran 
scholastics, but among the leading Reformers he main- 
tains it alone. Luther and Calvin, while asserting with 
lesser or greater emphasis the doctrine of predestina- 
tion, treat the invisible number of the elect or com- 
munion of saints simply as the core of the visible 
Society which is concentric with it. The Church to 
them is one only, not two. It is at once invisible and 
visible ; invisible in respect of the bond which unites 
its true members to Christ, visible in the external notes 
of the Word and Sacraments, the presence of which 
denote the body in which they are found as a true 
portion of the Church of Christ. Luther’s insistence 
on the invisibility of the Church is an assertion, against 
the contention that an earthly society must have a 
visible head, of the invisibility of the vital unity of the 
Church: Regnum Christi internum? He founds his 
idea of the Church not upon predestination but upon 
the Communion of Saints, visible to faith, recognisable 
by the external signs of “Word and Sacraments.” ? 


1 Which as such is charged with the duty of enforcing virtue and godli- 
ness by law. 

2 Ritschl (as above, note 2). 

3 This is from Augustine: ¢.¢. Zp. 21. 3, ‘‘Sacramentum et uerbum 
populo ministrare” ; ¢. Pefz/. iii. 67, ‘‘ minister uerbi et sacramenti euan- 
gelici, si bonus . . . si autem malus est non ideo dispensator non est 
euangelii” ; ¢. Faust. XIII. xvi., ‘‘cum paucis haereditatem Dei, cum 
multis autem ségnacu/a eius participanda ” (where the context explains the 
signacula as sacramenta). More passages might be quoted. 


356 REGNUM DEI 





Calvin’s idea of the Church is more closely bound up 
with the predestinarian idea, and so far approximates 
to that of Zwingli; but he, also, recognises in the 
visible society the indispensable vehicle of grace, the 
divine provision for the infirmity of man, the instrument 
of God’s grace for His elect.! Practically his system 
issued in a subjection of the civil to the ecclesiastical 
organisation as complete as that of the Middle Ages, 
but differing from it in aim and spirit. Political 
freedom and self-government were enlisted in the 
enforcement of personal morality and of the realisation 
of the Church as the visibly holy Society united by the 
express aim of religious regeneration. 

Neither Luther nor Calvin can be said, therefore, to 
have maintained the dogma of an invisible Church; 
but while Roman Catholicism makes the visible hier- 
archy an object of faith as a divinely-instituted system 
of government, Luther and Calvin point to the visible 
Society as the casket which enshrines the reality, visible 
to faith, of the true body of Christ. Both agree-that 
the preaching of the Word and the due ministration 
of the Sacraments* are the external notes of the 
Church; and this definition has passed into our own 
formularies. The definition is, as a definition, hardly 
satisfactory. It is rather a description of the local and 
particular Church than a definition of the Church as a 


1 By the principle of ‘‘ obsignation” : ‘‘ obsignant uero, quatenus diuina 
testimonia sunt, ad idipsum testandum adhibita quod ipsa Promissio 
testatur; nempe sacrificio Christi partam esse credentibus remissionem 
peccatorum, gratiam Spiritus sancti et uitam aeternam ” (Pisc. Locz Comm. 
Xxili. 3). 

2 See Mark Pattison, Zssays, vol. ii. (xii.), Calvin at Geneva. 

3 Ritschl, Aufsatze, pp. 76, 80, 112 sq. 


PROBLEM OF MODERN THEOLOGY 357 


whole, and it leaves open great variety of opinion as 
to what constitutes the pure Word of GOD, and what 
conditions are involved in the due ministration of the 
Sacraments. But these questions, and the answers to 
them which our own Church has adopted, lie outside 
the purpose of this Lecture. It may suffice to say 
that the English Church, practically alone among the 
reformed Churches of Europe, embodies the attempt to 
give effect to the episcopal theory of the ‘constitution 
of the Church which animated the unsuccessful efforts 
of the conciliar party at the beginning of the fifteenth 
century.2. That this attempt has so far failed to solve 
the difficulty involved in the relations between the civil 
and the ecclesiastical power is in part due to the legacy 
of unsolved problems bequeathed by the break-up of 
the medieval system. The difficulty is the legacy of 
many centuries ; its solution can only come with time, 
and must be attempted with infinite patience, and with 
acceptance of historical conditions. 


II 


The present age has been marked by the attempt 
to go back to the fountain-head with the aim of re- 
interpreting the fundamental Biblical idea of the 
Kingdom of Gop. The recognition of Biblical Theo- 


1 This defect is in part due to the tendency to identify the visible 
Church with the local ‘‘ Gemeinde,” while the Universal Church as 
such is held to be “‘invisible.” If we hold the principle of unity 
to be not a visible head, but a hidden and sacramental union with 
the living Christ, it is impossible wholly to reject this distinction, The 
Holy Catholic Church is in part an object of sight, but gua object of fazth 
it is not seen. 

2 Supra, p. 328. 


358 REGNUM DEI 


logy, built up in the light of historical criticism and 
exegesis, as the necessary preliminary to the systematic 
treatment of theology, is favourable to such an attempt. 
As a result, we may hope for a fertilisation of the con- 
ception of the Church and of its relation to the problems 
of human life in the light of the master-idea of the 
Kingdom of Christ on earth. 

Among the most suggestive of modern endeavours 
to do justice to this task is that of Albert Ritschl.? 
Much as there is in his method and conclusions which 
is uncongenial to English habits of thought, he has 
the merit of doing justice to a side of Christian teach- 
ing from which Protestant theology had too much 
drifted away, namely the theological significance of the 
Church in relation to the Kingdom of GoD. Minimis- 
ing somewhat unduly the eschatological character of 
the latter doctrine, he finds its essence in the concep- 
tion of a society, which embodies the Divine Purpose 
for humanity and the chief good of man. This is the 
ideal moral brotherhood, bound together by Divine 
Love in the realisation of the sum of supernatural ends. 
This Kingdom is not to be identified with the Church 
im respect of the Churchs organisation and hierarchy ; 
this identification he regards as the fundamental mis- 


1 That division of the general Biblical section of Historical Theology 
which, building on the results of critical and exegetical study of the text, 
arranges in order of historical development the religious ideas embodied in 
the various books or group of books. It thus prepares the ground for 
‘« Systematic,” Constructive, or Dogmatic Theology. 

? Lived 1822-1887. At first under the influence of the Tiibingen School, 
whose conclusions he afterwards abandoned (Lightfoot, Ga/atians, p. 285, 
note (ed. 3)). Ritschl’s principal works bearing on this subject are: Lehre 
d. Rechtfertigung, etc. (supra, p. 354, note 2); Unterricht in der Christ- 
lichen Religion (ed. 2, 1881) ; and the Az/fsatze, also quoted szpra. 





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PROBLEM OF MODERN THEOLOGY 359 


take of St. Augustine ;1 but he sees in the Augustinian 
thought of the czvitas Dei on earth a great advance 
upon earlier Christian conceptions in which the 
biblical idea of the Kingdom of GoD had, as he 
holds, been obscured. 

The Church is the Kingdom of GoD in the making, 
in so far as she is, by her priesthood, faith, and life, 
progressively realising the character of the ideal moral 
unity described above. These activities belong to the 
ethical? idea of the Church, which must always be 
viewed in subordination to her primary character as 
embodying the Grace of Christ. This she does in the 
Word and Sacraments which are given her by GOD, 
not produced by her in response to divine grace. 
Whatever is so produced belongs not to the theological 
and primary, but to the ethical side of the Church. But 
the latter depends upon the former, and it is through 
the sum total of her “ ethical” activities, the priesthood 
of Christians as such, their creed, prayers, worship, and 
diversities of administrations, that the Church is realis- 
ing, is coming to be, the Kingdom of Gop. This dis- 
tinction between the primary and the practical idea of 
the Church corresponds to that between divine grace 
and human responsibility, between the Church in itself 
and the Church in history, the one universal and the 
particular and national Churches. The Gratia Christi 
is the efficient cause, the Kingdom of Gop the end and 


1 A historical error in which Ritschl has been followed by others (see 
above, Lect. V. p. 173, note 1). 

9 Aufsaize, p. 118; Rechtfertigung, iii. 29-33, etc. By ‘‘ethical” he 
means those manifestations of the life of the Church which summon 
wil/ into activity, in response to the Grace of Gop (see also Unterricht, 


§§ 7-9). 


360 REGNUM DEI 





goal ;—the process from the one to the other, in which - 
the several members of Christ are being trained up “to 
a perfect man,” is embodied in the historical Church, 
which may be divided to the eye of flesh, but which 
faith, looking to the beginning and the end, embraces 
as one.} 

The Church, then, to Ritschl is invisible in so far as 
Faith in the Church is directed to her invisible life. 
To demand that this should be visible, that her holiness 
should be visible without spot or wrinkles, is the demand 
of puritanism, exemplified in the Novatians and Dona- 
tists of old, and to some extent in the discipline of 
Calvin at Geneva. The demand must fail; because 
it seeks to hasten a process the completion of which 
is in the hands of GoD. But although, to borrow 
terms from the Theology of the Sacraments, the Res 
Ecclesiae is invisible, the Ecclesia is visible; an invis- 
ible Church would be no society at all, for a society 
must be united by the conscious pursuit of an aim in 
common. Even in respect of its primary character, 
the Church has visible notes, and in its practical self- 
realisation it is either visible or non-existent. 


The system of Ritschl, of which the above is a 
meagre but I think a fairly correct sketch, has no a 
finality. He does indequate justice to the eschato- 
logical side of the Kingdom of GoD in our Lord’s 
teaching and in the mind of the Church of all ages; 
he fails to do justice to St. Augustine’s contribution to 


1 See the important passage Azu/sdtze, p. 133; he concludes: ‘‘ Theo- - 
logical theory is of value only so far as it answers to Faith. But Faith 
knows the Church only in her Unity.” 


PROBLEM OF MODERN THEOLOGY 36! 


the subject; his conception of the “supernatural”? 
requires careful scrutiny ; and the whole is coloured by 
an attitude toward metaphysics which is at least para- 
doxical.2, The system has no finality, but it is certainly 
rich in suggestion, and future investigation cannot pass 
it by without doing justice to its root-ideas. In 
particular, Ritschl’s agreement with St. Augustine is 
more important than he himself realised. In so far as 
we can detach the fundamental and spiritual doctrine 
of the Kingdom of GoD in Augustine’s theory of the 
Church from his rigid predestinarianism, we have as the 
result a conception of the Church as the Kingdom of 
GoD in the making, not indeed the same as that of the 
modern thinker, but yet in essential harmony with it. 
The resemblance and difference between the two 
may perhaps be seen if we consider their bearing upon 
the most permanent and fundamental problems involved 
in the conception of an earthly kingdom of Christ,— 


1 He very seriously underrates the eschatological aspect of the Kingdom 
of Gop, in which, as we have seen (Lects. I., II.), lies its original and most 
persistent significance. He holds that, our Lord’s teaching on the subject 
being above the receptivity of His hearers, the Jewish Christians under- 
stood it of a millennium, the Gentiles merely of a future life. 

By ‘‘supernatural” Ritschl appears to mean (Unterricht, § 8; cf. 
Rechtf. iii. 464, 564, etc.) that which transcends the ethical and social 
obligations which are based upon man’s natural endowments. These, left 
to themselves, offer occasion for self-seeking. The Kingdom of Gop is 
‘*supernatural ” decawse based on dove: in realising it man overcomes ‘‘ the 
world” of which he is by nature a part, and, assured in Christ of eternal 
life, knows that he is united to Gop by a bond which death itself cannot 
sever (so Unterricht, §§ 45, 76). 

2 The demand to keep metaphysics out of theology colours all Ritschl’s 
system. He devoted to it a special work, the small but interesting tract 
Theologie und Metaphysik (1881). But the demand is one that defeats 
itself, for theology, like man himself, is metaphysical xo/ens volens, Ritschl’s 
whole theory is based on metaphysics in so far as it depends (as every 
system of theology ultimately must) upon a very definite theory of 
knowledge. 


362 REGNUM DEI 


I mean the Christian attitude toward common life and 
its interests, civil, political, intellectual and social. It 
is possible either to condemn all such interests and 
concerns as worldly, the attitude of Millenniarists and 
sectaries, or to regard them as sanctified only if brought 


under ecclesiastical direction,—the medieval view, anti-— % 
cipated by Augustine in one side, not as I think the — 
most fundamental side, of his philosophy of history. 


Or it is possible to invest them with exclusive value 
per se,—the secularist view, tending to practical materi- 
alism, and as abhorrent to Ritschl as to Augustine 
himself. Or lastly it is possible to view these things 
as the proper field for the exercise, the trial and the 
display, of Christian character;! a view which goes 
back to St. Paul, and is consecrated by the example of 
our Saviour’s free intercourse with men and interest in 
human joys and sorrows.2. That the Church trains her 
members not to fly from active life, but to live it in the 
love and fear of GOD, is a truth easier perhaps to 
realise in our time than in that of St. Augustine, but 
there is much in his conception of the kingdom of 
Christ, much in the de Civitate itself, that supports the 
conviction that human government and society itself 
finds no bond so enduring as the Christian character, 
and that the Christian life must be a useful life* It is 
in emphasising this as the true Christian outlook upon 
life that Ritschl’s conception of the Kingdom of GOD is 
most important in its suggestiveness for the future. 

1 Phil. iv. 8; 1 Tim. v. 8; Eph. v. 22-vi. 9, etc. 

? This is the strong side of the remarkable book, full of real insight, but 
one-sided and in some respects a psychological enigma: Pro Christo e¢ 


Ecclesia. 
3 This is very strikingly enforced by St. Augustine, de opere Monachorum. 





PROBLEM OF MODERN THEOLOGY 363 


He does not in the least share the instinct of Rothe in 
Germany or of some distinguished Churchman of our 
own country, to disparge the ecclesiastical organisation 
as practically obsolete, and destined to merge in the 
forms of civil life. Such idealised secularism ignores, 
as Ritschl saw, the plain facts of life and the equally 
plain purpose of Christ. On the one hand our Lord 
committed his purpose for man’s salvation to a Society 
which he commissioned to teach what he had taught, to 
live as he had lived, and to seek before all things the 
Kingdom of GOD and his Righteousness: he gave no 
hint that this society would ever have so far discharged 
its distinctive message that it could merge its corporate 
existence in the society around it. On the contrary 
he warned his followers against dangers which would 
always threaten them from “the world,” and assured 
them of his perpetual presence so long as that world 
should last. And on the other hand experience tells 
us that human society is ever drifting from its highest 
ideals, ever needs to be led back to them, that men who 
are weak as individuals are strong in combination, and 
that no influence can be permanent which has no body 
of men specially devoted to its cause. Moreover we 
have come to see that the State can realise its moral 
aim not so much by laws or official action as by the 
character of its citizens, and that for the maintenance 
and elevation of that character it must rely upon 
resources which it cannot itself command. 

It is for the Church, not for the State, to bring 
about the day when the kingdom over this world is to 
pass to our GOD and to his Christ. 

How then does this affect our ultimate question? 


364 REGNUM DEI 


III 


The Christian Church has at all times and with one 
consent sought the Kingdom of GOD in the eternal 
reign of the Father, to be inaugurated by the Second 
Advent and the last Judgment. Nothing short of an 
eternity is a worthy sphere for the perfect moral 
government of GOD. Nor again has there ever been 
a time when the Christian consciousness has not re- 
sponded to our Lord’s assurance that the Kingdom of 
Gop is within, that the heart and conscience are its 
seat and home, the new birth of will and character the 
measure and sign of its coming. When we have made 
sure of these two interpretations, we have satisfied very 


_ much of the language of our Lord; but not quite all. 


It is natural, in the highest sense, to man, to direct 
his energies upon the society around him, to live not 
for himself alone; and this, we may be sure, is an 
instinct of our nature to which the Son of Man will do 
justice. “The Kingdom of GoD is within you,” but is 
isolated self-culture, therefore, the path towards its 
realisation? It is within, but may none the less have 
to be sought without. Its home is the conscience and 
the heart, but where do these find their scope for 
action? Its coming is seen in the new birth of 
character and will; but does this come direct from GOD 
unaided by secondary causes? or again does it issue in 
atomistic individualism ? 

The irrepressible Christian instinct has always been 
to seek the Kingdom of GOD in this world, not in the 
next only; and not within only, but also without. 

1 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1. vii. 6, red) pices wodiriKds dvOpwiros. 





SUMMARY OF IDEALS 365 


Revealed religion has never appealed to the individual 
merely as such, but to individuals federated in a 
brotherhood, first of blood, then of faith.1 And so, from 
the Gospels onward, the eternal and perfect Kingdom 
of GoD demands its earthly counterpart in the society 
of Christ’s people on earth. But the relation between 
the two has been conceived in two alternative ways. 
The Church has been held to correspond with the 
divine kingdom either in respect of her internal holiness, 
that is in so far as her members are, to use Augustine’s 
expression, even now, though in a far inferior degree, 
as truly reigning with Christ, as they will reign with him 
hereafter; or, on the other hand,? in respect of her 
governing power, firstly and essentially over all her 
members, but secondly, over all the kingdoms and 
societies which exist among mankind,! These two last- 
named conceptions of the earthly kingdom of Christ, 
firstly as embodied in the Church as a government 
within her own limits, secondly in an ideal state of the 
world in which the Church is the supreme authority, 
ruling absolutely within limits which she alone is com- 
petent to define, are in reality one and the same. The 
second is the necessary complement of the first, and, if 
we assume the first, to realise the second ‘becomes the 
necessary aim of the Church and of all her loyal mem- 
bers. Its only complete form is the papal system, for 


1 Ritschl, Unterricht, § 7 (and supra, Lects. I., II.). 

2Tt might appear at first sight that the alternative has been between 
identifying the kingdom of Christ on earth on the one hand with the 
Church as such, or, on the other hand, with a state or position which the 
Church is to acquire, whether of internal perfection or of external power. 
But the true alternative embraces those just mentioned on each of its sides 
as subordinate branches. 


366 REGNUM DEI 


in that system alone has the problem been solved of a 
constitution capable of carrying on the legislative and 
executive machinery adequate to enforce a common 


system of law for the whole body. The first assertion — 


of this idea of the Church was indeed very different in 
form and spirit. The millennial reign of Christ was the 
hope of the persecuted Church which looked for a 
visible reign on earth of Christ and his saints, to whom 
the kingdom of the world would belong at his coming. 
Compared with this hope, the ideal of the visible reign 
of Christ in the person of the Pope his Vicar was 
rational and practical. But both Millenniarism and the 
papal system have in common the idea of the earthly 
reign conceived of as an external government. Both 
alike, though with very unequal influence, retain a 
strong hold upon men’s minds to the present day. But 
just as Millenniarism could not, as a dominant belief, 
survive the long delay of its hopes, coupled with the 
development of the speculative activity of the Church, 
so the papal system has long since lost all power to 
direct either the political or the intellectual life of 
Christendom. Practically, it has been obliged to recede 
from its medieval ideal of universal rule; its authority 
has become confined to the exercise of ecclesiastical 
government, and to technical control of doctrine as dis- 
tinct from matters of science or general thought and 
culture. The idea of universal rule is indeed main- 
tained in theory, but its assertion is ineffectual and 

1 See above, p. 316, note 3 (Cesena). Theologians are apt to underrate, 
or overlook entirely, the strong hold which Millenniarism, even at the 
present day, retains over minds disposed to simple realism, and often as the 


nucleus of still more strange systems of literalism. Such simplicity deserves 
no less respectful treatment than that of Justin or Irenaeus. 





SUMMARY OF IDEALS 367 


academic. Political and scientific activity takes, and 
will continue to take, its own course, untroubled by the 
thought of ecclesiastical control. The power of the 
Church over the moral life of her members is exerted 


by spiritual means only, without the aid of the law. 


In a word, the civil sword no longer even sharpens? 
the ecclesiastical. 

Now this result is so far purely negative. The 
verdict of history has condemned the attempt to realise 
the earthly kingdom of Christ in the form of a Church 
whose organisation is omnipotent in the affairs of the 
world. The verdict of history has condemned it, not 
merely in the sense that it is no longer in force,—for 
what time brings forth may, after a while, disappear, 
and what is now out of fashion may return again,—but 
in the sense that history has shown that the system 
inevitably collides with indispensable moral ideals, and 
that it falls short of the full grandeur and height of the 
Christianity of the New Testament. 

But all this leaves untouched the more spiritual 
identification of the Church with the kingdom of Christ 
on earth, as Augustine conceived it, in which the point 
of contact is not the external organisation but the 
inward holiness of the Church; an identification already 
accomplished in so far as the Church is the seat of 
Christ’s reign in the will and character of his members, 
and to be fully accomplished when “ the earth is filled 
with the knowledge of GOD as the waters cover the 
sea.” Hildebrand was right, a thousand times right, 


1 Peter Damiani, stopping short of the claim of Hildebrand, says: 
“Felix autem si gladium regni cum gladio zumgat sacerdotii, ut gladius 
sacerdotis mztiget gladium regis, et gladius regis gladium acwat sacerdotis ” 
(Serm. 69). 


368 REGNUM DEI 


in his conviction that for the good of man, for the 
realisation of the Kingdom of GoD, Christian ideas 
must rule mankind. He sought this lofty end by 
means, obviously commended to religious zeal in the 
then stage of historical development, but which experi- 
ence eventually showed to be mistaken. If it is given 
to us in these latter days to perceive his mistake, we 
must none the less see to it that we reverence and 
emulate his zeal for GOD’s Kingdom. His mistake 
was the natural one of seeking to drive rather than to 
lead, of substituting the Jewish ideal of righteousness 
by means of government for the Christian ideal of 
government by means of righteousness. 

Bishop Butler, in his famous chapter on the moral 
government of GOD, gives noble utterance to this latter 
idealt He asks us to imagine “a kingdom or society 
of men perfectly virtuous for a succession of many 
ages,” in which “ public determinations would really be 
the result of the united wisdom of the community; 
and they would be faithfully executed by the united 
strength of it.” “ Add,” he says, “the general influence 
which such a kingdom would have over the face of the 
earth, by way of example particularly, and of the 
reverence which would be paid it. It would plainly be 
superior to all others, and the world must gradually 
come under its empire.” “The head of it would be an 
universal monarch, in another sense than. any mortal 
has yet been; and the Eastern style would be literally 
applicable to him, ‘that all people, nations, and 
Such a Society would 
fufil what Butler elsewhere claims for conscience, that 


>” 


languages should serve him. 


1 See above, p. 281; Butler, Avalogy, I. iii. § 29. 


SUMMARY OF IDEALS 369 


“Had it strength, as it had right; had it power, as it 
had manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the 
world.”? Butler is unconsciously reaffirming the ideal 
of monarchy embodied four centuries previously by 
Dante, but his universal monarch is more clearly than 
by Dante conceived as the representative and minister 
of the citizens upon whose character the power of the 
Society is built up. The Society is a State not a 
Church. But its glory is the result not of its in- 
stitutions, but of the moral regeneration of its members. 
This regeneration, he adds, can only be looked for as 
the result of miracle; but it is not extravagant to say 
that this miracle is the ideal towards which the Chris- 
tian Church directs her aspirations and aims, and that 
the Christian Church is the only body of men conscious 
of a common aim in any way corresponding to Butler’s 
ideal. Institutions may react upon the moral character 
of those who live under them; but bad institutions are 
more potent to depress the moral life than good ones 
are to raise it, while if the moral life of the community 
is pure and strong any institutions controlled by it will 
produce the best of which they are capable. It is, as 
Butler saw, to the moral sense of the common people 
that we must ultimately look, and experience has 
taught us that institutions, though they may coerce 
wrong-doing and enforce external justice, can neither 
produce morality nor dispense with its support. On 
the other hand the possibility of a society such as 
Butler imagines does not depend, quite so simply as 
Butler appears to assume, upon the aggregate morality 
of so many righteous individuals. The leaven of Stoic 


1 Sermon 2 (p. 406 in Bohn’s ed.). See Lect. VII. sub init. 
24 


370 REGNUM DEI 


individualism, which hampers the Arminian morality of 
Butler not less than the religious side of the philosophy 
of Kant,! has been sufficiently unlearned by religious 
thinkers since Kant’s time. That we cannot live upon 
mere individualism, whether moral or religious, extra 
ecclestam nulla salus, is now a truism, misleading only 
when dependence upon institutions, as if they could 
regenerate our nature, is suggested as the only alter- 
native. Toa false individualism, not government but 
brotherhood is the true antithesis. And if the Church 
is to display all her latent power to regenerate human 
character, and is to gather into her bosom all that in 
the life and thought and work of mankind belongs to 
the proper heritage of the Kingdom of GOD, it must be 
by the recovery of her original sense of brotherhood.” 
Organisation and system are good in themselves, and 
those responsible for them will always, so far as they 
are zealous in their duty, endeavour to make them 
complete and perfect. But perfection of system, how- 
ever desirable for the Church as a visible society, is 
not the special note of the Kingdom of GOD; in 
organising herself, in legislating, in governing as every 


1 Kant founds the conception of a Kingdom of Gop not upon historical 
revelation but upon pure a frtorz principles of practical reason: it is my 
duty to work for the moral society of all rational beings; as man cannot 
possibly produce such a society, Gop is demanded by the elementary pre- 
suppositions of morality,—in order to synthesise ‘‘can” and ‘‘ought.” 
But the evil in man’s nature remains undealt with ; Atonement reduces 
itself to the duty of suffering the consequences of past sin. But Kant has 
other thoughts which modify this and open the way to historic faith. (See 
Ritschl, Rechif. i. 456-459.) 

2? The above had been written as it stands before the writer had seen 
Mr. Gore’s book on the Body of Christ. It is a special pleasure to refer in 
confirmation of what is here urged to the striking close of that very 
striking book (pp. 320-330). 


SUMMARY OF IDEALS 371 


society of men must, the Church is doing what is 
absolutely necessary, as necessary as eating and cloth- 
ing to the individual; but she is acting below the 
height of her commission; she is enacting necessary 
rules for the time, not divine laws; acting as a society 
of men, not as the Kingdom of Gop.t It is not as a 
governing body, as a “Societas Perfecta,” that the 
Church will regenerate human nature, but as a brother- 
hood. She will possess and exercise the authority 
inherent in her divine mission, the authority to deliver | 
the message of Christ and to insist with charity and | 
wisdom upon the holiness of his Body in its members. 
But she will use the authority in order to educate her 
members into the capacity for and the exercise of 
perfect freedom, nor will she erect dependence upon a 
human guide into the ideal of Christian perfection. 
Such dependence is the necessary incident of the 
Church’s imperfection. Her horizon must never be 
bounded by it; her effort must ever be directed toward 
the goal of Jeremiah, the day when “they shall no 
longer teach every man his neighbour and every man 
his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know 
me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, 
saith the Lord.” The goal of Jeremiah’s vision was 


1 How far the power of ‘‘ binding and loosing” (stra, Lect. II. p. 66, 
note I) refers to legislation, how far to the treatment of moral duties and 
the dealing with sinners, is a point deserving more extended consideration 
than can be given here. Iam disposed to refer it less to the legislative or 
governmental action of the Church than to the judgment of the Christian 
consciousness, progressively enlightened by the Holy Spirit. In any case 
Dante was right in his contention that it cannot be understood “‘ aéso/ute,” 
sed respective ad aliguid . . . posset [enim] soluere me non poenitentem, 
quod etiam facere ipse Deus non posset” (de Mon. I11. viii. 34). Tarquini, 
on the other hand, deduces from Matt. xvi. 19 that St. Peter is invested 
with ‘‘ potestas absoluta et monarchica” ( /Jurts. eccl. Inst. p. 98). 


372 REGNUM DEI 


also that of St. Paul’s apostolic work—to “ present 
every man perfect in Christ ”—to bring to maturity the 
“spiritual man, judging all things, but himself judged 
of none,” like the wind which “bloweth where it listeth, 
and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell 
whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” The ideal is no 
doubt unpractical, in the sense that after two thousand 
years of Christianity we might seem to be further from 
it than we were at the beginning. Individualist licence 
which drives men apart is fatally easy to realise; hardly 
less easy is the unity of mere conformity where the 
energy of individual conscience and conviction is re- 
placed by acquiescence in a central authority; no 
sacrifice comes easier to weak humanity than “the 
sacrifice of the intellect.” But to idealise the practicable 
is the note of inferior religions, not of the kingdom 
of Christ. Mahomet sounded shrewdly the probable 
capacities of the average man, and made it the measure 
of his moral demand ;! our Saviour viewed men as the 
sons of His own Father, and founds his Society on the 
rock of a faith which will raise man above his native 
self, and bring all together in one Body and one 
Spirit as children of GOD and brethren by a common 
adoption. 

The weakness of the false individualism has its 
remedy, neither in the neglect of the individual soul nor 


1 Mozley (Bampton Lectures on Miracles, p. 178 sq. ed. 2): “‘ Man is 
weak,” says Mahomet. And upon that maxim he legislates. ‘‘ There 
were two things which he thought man could do and would do for the 
glory of God—Transact religious forms, and fight; and upon those two 
points he was severe; but within the sphere of common practical life, 
where man’s great trial lies,” etc. etc, (The whole passage ought to be 
read.) 


pe 


a 


¥ 


CHURCH AND ETHICAL CULTURE 373 


in the suppression of the individual conscience and 
intelligence, but in the recovery of the true idea of 
Christian freedom hand in hand with the reality of 
Christian brotherhood. Individual licence is destruc- 
tive of brotherhood, because it destroys mutual trust. 
True liberty, emancipation from self and the world, 
realised where the individual responsibility is fullest, 
is coextensive with the Spirit which “maketh men to 
be of one mind in an house.” 3 


EV 


The New Testament ideal of the regeneration of 
individual character by free fellowship in the body of 
Christ has an unpractical look, but the same may be 
said of the brotherhood of man and of moral progress 
in human society. This much may safely be said, that 
from the Christian ideal the humanitarian ideal derives 
at the present day, and has always derived, almost all 
the practical power it has exercised in the world. 

(2) To ignore this fact,—to seek what may vaguely 
be called the Kingdom of GOD in the form of schemes 
of social amelioration coloured by the language of 
a hazy and otiose theism and supported by a scheme 
of ethics from which religion is sedulously excluded, 
is an attempt which commends itself to some earnest 
minds at the present day, mainly as an escape from 
the intellectual difficulties of religious belief and 
from the embarrassments brought into philanthropic 
and educational work by the deep divisions which 


1 Ps, Ixviii. 6 (Prayer-Book) ; 2 Cor. iii. 17. 
2 Brace, Gesta Christz. 


374 REGNUM DEI 


exist in the Christian world. But if regeneration of 
character, the essential foundation of all social progress, 
is attempted in vain by anything short of an appeal 
to our higher nature as a whole, and if religion is as 
certain, as permanent, and as legitimate a constituent 
of that nature as reason and morality themselves (and 
to dispute either of these suppositions would be philo- 
sophically very rash), the substitution, under whatever 
form, of the humanitarian for the Christian ideal will 
succeed in evading the difficulties of religious belief 
only at the cost of foregoing all power to deal with 
human nature as it is and always will be; it will end 
either in abortive attempts at legislation, or in the 
merely material improvement of things as they are. 

But still the fact that such ideals attract men and 
women of unquestionable goodness is itself a warning 
of the imperfect correspondence of the actual Church 
to the truth of the Kingdom of Gop. 

That sin and self-seeking, ignorance and folly and 
lawless power of all kinds should lie outside the Church 
and hinder its work, is what the New Testament 
prepares us for and what no doubt we often see. But 
that there should be in the world unimpeachable moral 
virtue and self-denial, fearless love of truth, high-souled 
devotion to causes fraught with benefit to mankind, a 
whole world of good which the Church has failed to 
assimilate and for much of which it can find no room, is 
a fact as indisputable as it is significant. The Kingdom 
of GOD is promoted only by what is good, and by all 
that is good, it is hindered only by what is really evil. 
And yet there have been cases! in which in seeking the 

1 Cf. Lect. VI. (on Arnold), Lect. VII., and too many other examples. 


<ip eee 


CHURCH AND ETHICAL CULTURE 375 


Kingdom of GoD men have been brought into collision 
with the Church, and more cases still in which men 
have given their best for the good of humanity, for the 
advancement of truth or the raising of human life, 
while the Church has turned aside in jealousy or at 
best looked coldly on! As a rule in these cases 
individuals are not greatly to blame; the one-sidedness 
of human nature is at fault, a one-sidedness which 
seems too often the necessary price paid for enthusiasm 
and practical effectiveness. But we must look back 
upon the history of all this friction and lack of sym- 
pathy with continual regret, with much tolerance for 
all sides, and not least for Churchmen who have failed 
fully to answer to their birthright; as to the future, 
our faith demands of us the conviction that in propor- 
tion as the Christian society becomes the worthy 
vehicle and embodiment of Christ’s réign upon earth, 
it will become more and more completely the home 
of all high moral ideals and all good causes, and of all 
who pursue them in simplicity and singleness of heart. 
It is an idle dream to think of the Church, or the 
Kingdom of GOD, simply as a moralised or idealised 
civil society, as if that completer union of religion with 
common life which we all desire were to be effected 
by reducing religion to civilisation and not rather by 
raising civilisation, as it so sorely needs to be raised, 
by the leaven of personal religion.2 But idle as the 
dream is, it contains this grain of truth, that the 


1 Without overrating Bentham as a philosopher, it is possible to lament 
the scant sympathy he received from the Church in his noble and success- 
ful labours for the reform of the cruel criminal law. To multiply examples 
would be possible but most distasteful to a Churchman. 

2 See above, p. 362 sq. 


376 REGNUM DEI 


prevalence of right and truth among mankind, even 
outside as well as within the Church’s nominal limits, 
cannot but be a matter of the deepest moment to the 
citizen of the Kingdom of Gop. That “we are mem- 
bers one of another” is a truth that concerns us 
primarily as Christians, but it concerns us not less 
really as men. 

It might seem at first sight—it does seem to 
some—that we are as Christians to look for the 
salvation of souls and not for the improvement of the 
world,—not for the regeneration of society, but for the 
detachment of individuals from a corrupt society by 
their incorporation in a Holy Society,—and that con- 
sequently we may dismiss from our mind the fortunes 
of morality, justice, and truth in “the world,” except 
in so far as the peace and power of the Church is 
concerned... We are reminded of the hints given by 


Christ and his Apostles of a great Apostasy, of Anti- 


christ, and of the fewness of the chosen. But these 
hints, sufficient to warn the over-sanguine, are yet 
fragmentary and dark, and are balanced by other 
sayings which point in a more hopeful direction. 
Nor can we overlook the whole tenor of the revelation 
of Gop’s character in Old and New Testament alike, 
as a GOD who loves right and truth, and hates the 
false and evil, for their own sake, and blesses all 
that makes for the cause of righteousness in human 
society. And once more, as surely as mountains 
whose base is on the highest ground reach the nearer 


1See Lect. IV. sub fin. This conventual idea of the Church and 
the world appears to underlie the idealism of Hildebrand (Lect. VI. 


Pp. 249 sq.). 





7 


7 ee eS Se eee! SS eee 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 377 


to heaven with their summits, so surely does all 
that weakens evil and aids the good among the mass 
of mankind, tend to the greater strength and whole- 
someness and the wider influence of the Christian 
character. 

It is possible to adhere to the spirituality of St. 
Augustine’s conception of the kingdom of Christ on 
earth, without following him either into conclusions in 
which he transgressed the limits of what God has 
revealed, or in his almost wholesale condemnation of 
secular morality. That real goodness exists outside 
the Christian name, that real goodness, wherever it 
exists, is the natural ally of the Christian life, and 
cannot but be pleasing to God,—these are truths now 
so evident to all honest observers of human nature 
that they are recognised by those whom no one will 
suspect of Pelagianism. Rather we hold all the closer 
to our conviction that all good in man is inspired by 
GOD alone, and recognise the traces of His Spirit even 
in those who are serving Him unconsciously. To 
recognise this is no derogation to our belief that GoD 
“wills all men,’ not only “to be saved,” but “to 
come to the knowledge of the truth,” and to our duty 
to aid them thither. Nor does it impair the general 
truth, imposed upon us by experience, that the 
normal tendency of all that is best in men is toward 
Christ, and that it is in Him alone that, as a matter 
of experience and fact, men have found, not only 
wisdom and righteousness, but sanctification and re- 
demption. 

(4) It is the perception of this truth, namely, that 
the mission of the Christian Society is not exhausted 


378 REGNUM DEI 


either by the salvation of the individual or by work 
of a purely ecclesiastical kind, that has given birth to 
the assemblage of aspirations and endeavours which 
are grouped under the head of Christian Socialism. 
So far as this is founded upon the distinctively socialist 
assumption’ that good institutions can make good 
men, that to reorganise society is to regenerate it, it is 
exposed, I venture to think, to all the objections which 
lie against any system which seeks to realise righteous- 
ness by means of government. No government, no 
institutions, can regenerate character unless the be- 
ginning is made with the individual, righteousness 
works outward from within, not inward from without. 
-To_work well, institutions, however good, presuppose 
the character of those who share them. What the 
Church has proved unable to do, the civil society will 
a fortiori be powerless to accomplish. Christian 
Socialism must be Christian first, and the social effects 
will, with Gop’s help, follow. But if by Christian 
Socialism we understand the resolve to bring Christian 
principles of justice, humanity, and self-denial into 
common life, and to administer in a Christian spirit, 
with thoughtful and patient study of all the complex 
conditions of modern life, all the responsibilities, public 
as well as private, which fall to the lot of the modern 
citizen, to maintain—in the face of the reckless race 

1 (Supra, p. 369.) That bad institutions can make bad men, or at least 
can intensify the action of the lower motives which sway human action, 
is too true. And to work for the amelioration of such laws and institu- 
tions will therefore tend to liberate the better motives, and so to 
increase the number of good men. This is the truth urged in a remark- 
able little book, Commerce and Christianzty-(Sonnenschein, 1900) ; a book 


to be read with profit, whether or no we can follow all the author’s 
contentions. 


CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 379 


for wealth, the unscrupulous assertion of the right of 
the stronger, and the inordinate value set upon worldly 
enjoyment — the standard of Christian duty and 
Christian love,! then Christian Socialism is but another 
name for recognition of the duty of the Christian to 
human society, of the plain truth that it is only by 
bearing one another’s burdens that we can hope to 
fulfil the law of Christ. 

That the Kingdom of GOD cannot find its approxi- 
mate realisation on earth while unrighteous relations 
prevail among men, that it demands social regenera- 
tion, the purification of trade and commerce, the 
moralisation of the relations of employer and employed, 
the treatment of wealth as an opportunity? for good 
work, not as a means of luxury and ostentation, that 
so far as Christianity fails to effect this the fault is 
largely with Christians themselves; that men who are, 
as Augustine expresses it, themselves the Kingdom of 
GOD, will inevitably assert the life that is in them by 
raising and purifying the life around them, this is one 
great truth to which Christian Socialism bears witness. 
And another is this: that not only as a man influenc- 
ing his neighbour by “conversation” and personal 
example, but as a citizen, as a professional man, as 
an employer of labour, as a trader and a landlord and 


1 The debt of English Christianity to the social teaching of Maurice and 
Kingsley, and, I would add, of Bishop Westcott, will not be exhausted 
for many an age, (Written a few hours before the tidings of the bishop’s 
holy death.) 

2 Arist. Pol. I. iv. 1, dvev yap T&v dvayxalwy addvarov Kal (jv Kal eb 
Gav: 2, 70 Kripa bpyavoy mpds Swhv éort, Kal 4 KT7oWw wAAVOT dpyavwr : 
Vili. 15, 6 6€ mAodros dpyavev mARVG éoTw oikovopiKGy Kal wohiriKGy : 
and 14, 7 yap Tho Toalrno KTiTEwWs aitdpKea mpds ayabhy (why ovK 
Greipbc éorw. 


380 REGNUM DEI 


a shareholder and a voter, every Christian is ad- 
ministering a trust committed to him by CHRIST, 
and is charged to give effect in whatever way he can 
to the Christian law of justice and charity, of seeking 
the good of the many, and respecting the rights of 
even the weakest of his fellow-men. In these respects 
we must all be agreed that Christian Socialism is a 
witness to duties which Christians have inadequately 
realised, and to Christian responsibility for evils which 
we are too apt to accept as part of the order of nature. 
But to look for the Kingdom of GOD on earth only 
or primarily in the shape of social reform, is to invert 
the inexorable order of cause and effect in human 
life, and to depart from the interpretation of the 
Kingdom of GOD which is stamped upon Christian 
thought and experience as it has unfolded itself in the 
course of history. It has been the constant experience 
of mankind that ideals most readily succeed in en- 
gaging the enthusiastic service of masses of men in 
proportion as they offer a concrete and tangible 
object of pursuit; and at the present day this is 
offered to some by social work,—as it is offered to 
others by ecclesiastical or political partisanship,—to 
others again by some still more limited interest. But 
effectiveness is not the only standard of real value 
and truth; and the concrete and tangible is apt to 
be pursued at the cost of one-sidedness, with the 


1St. Augustine, Z/. 138. ii. 15: ‘‘Proinde qui doctrinam Christi 
aduersam dicunt esse reipublicae, dent exerczfum talem quales doctrina 
Christiana esse milites iussit; dent tales prouinciales, tales maritos, tales 
coniuges, tales parentes, tales filios, tales domznos, tales seruos, tales 
reges, tales zudices, tales denique debctorum ipsius fisct redditores et 
exactores,” etc, 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD ETERNAL 381 


risk of reaction, when the first force of a movement 
is spent, in some opposite but equally one-sided 
direction. 


V 


But it remains true that the chief good of man, 
although he must seek it as an individual and in 
constant truth to his highest and best self, cannot be 
realised by him merely as an individual in and for 
himself. For an adequate conception of the Chief 
Good, for an aim so lofty, so comprehensive, as_ to 
satisfy the ultimate desire of man, two things are 
necessary. It must be something we can gain, can in 
some degree produce,—an object of work; and yet it 
must be something independent of our failures, above 
the contingencies of life and history, something we can 
believe in as Real, and love as transcendently Good. 
Such an object is placed before us by our Saviour in 
the Kingdom of GoD: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of 
Gop and His Righteousness.” The Kingdom of GoD 
is above the world and destined to outlive it, while yet 
it is in a true sense zz the world as the goal of all 
moral and spiritual endeavour. 

The Apostle St. Paul has been criticised for his 
saying! that “if in this life only we have hope in Christ 
we are of all men most miserable.” If he meant that 
but for the prospect of compensation in the next 
world, Christian self-sacrifice and suffering would be so 
much dead loss, there would I think be justice in the 
objection. The Christian religion is not worthily 
presented as a religion simply of prudence; as if, 


11 Cor. xv. 19. 


382 REGNUM DEI 


personal enjoyment being assumed to be the goal of 
legitimate desire, we were bidden to surrender it 
wholly or in part for the present in order to secure it 
in a greater degree hereafter. ‘“Otherworldliness” is 
morally superior to ordinary worldliness in the sense 
that farsighted calculation, subordinating the pleasure 
of the moment to the pleasure of the future, involves 
the exercise of prudent self-denial. But the one as 
little as the other touches the higher atmosphere in 
which morality and religion meet together. No reader 
of St. Paul who is possessed of his general outlook 
upon life can for a moment tolerate the supposition 
that this is the assumption upon which he founds the — 
dictum to which I have referred. It is, on the contrary, 
just because the Christian has already found, in this 
life, something infinitely more precious than all those 
pleasures of men! which he has in his heart renounced, 
because the Kingdom of GoD is displayed to him in 
all its richness and ennobling power, because he knows 
how great, how terrible, would be the loss of it, that 
the thought that his hope is a hope bounded by the 
brevity and incertitude of human life draws from the 
Apostle his horrorstruck disclaimer. Those who have 
learned merely what this world can teach, namely the 
superficiality even of its most engrossing desires, the 
impossibility of satisfying them in most cases, their 
unsatisfying character in the few cases where they are 
gained, will in the end find it possible to reconcile 
themselves to the surrender of a life which brings dis- 
appointment to nearly all. But once to have risen above 
this disillusionment, to have discovered the true riches, 
1 Phil. iv. 12, wewdnuat. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD ETERNAL § 383 


to have found the pearl of great price, and then to dis- 
cover that it is as transitory, as fleeting, as our uncertain 
human life,—zhaz is to have hope in Christ in this life 
alone, and to be of all men most miserable. The loss 
of the highest is bitterer than the loss of things of no 
account. The Kingdom of GOD is righteousness and 
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. It is realisable in 
the highest life, and the highest life is directed not 
towards the mere perfecting of self, but to the love and 
service of GOD and of man for GOD’s sake. Yet what 
I am to serve with my whole soul must be not transi- 
tory but eternal. The life of mankind began ages 
before the individual life, and will doubtless survive it 
by many ages after. But whether it is to be closed by 
some sudden catastrophe of the visible universe or of our 
little sun and system, or by the slow loss of the heat 
and energy which, while they are still unspent, make 
life possible on our planet, nothing is more certain than 
that the existence of man on earth has had a beginning 
and will have an end. And with it will end not only 
the works of man’s hands, but, so far as this world is 
concerned, all the works of man’s spirit as well. Not 
only flesh and blood, not only pleasure and pain, love 
and hate, emotion thought and action, but all that man 
has made his own in the slow conquests of thought and 
morality and civilisation,—the Good, the Beautiful, and 
the True. The death of our world will destroy both 
it and them. And immense as seems the span of 
history, known and unknown, upon which we look back, 
immense as may be the ages still remaining for the life 
of our planet, the whole is finite, numbered and 
measured, not to our present knowledge, but none the 


384 REGNUM DEI 


less measured and numbered by laws in actual full 
operation. And if finite, how minute,—when compared 
with the stupefying vastness of the time-scale suggested 
to us by astronomical facts, and when this in turn is 
compared with the unimaginable void before and after, 
—how minute and insignificant is the time of the 
habitable earth itself, a mere twinkling of an eye in the 
march-past of the universe, of which our race sees but 
a moment, and a part! The thought, to a non-religious 
mind, is depressing just in proportion as the interest is 
centred upon the highest ideals of life. Right, and 
truth, and human affection, enlist the higher minds by 
their intrinsic value, but if they are after all mere 
products of planetary conditions to which they owe 
their origin and with the disappearance of which their 
very ground and meaning will be gone, they will enlist, 
after all, only such devotion—sincere but without 
rational hopefulness—as is proper to transitory though 
desirable objects. But the true suggestion of the facts 
has been perceived long ago— 


When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
The Moon and the stars which thou hast ordained ; 
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 

And the son of man, that thou visitest him? 

For thou hast made him but little lower than Gop 
And _ crownest him with glory and honour. 


The insignificance of man disappears in the 
conscious service of his Creator, the hope of the 
eternal Kingdom of GoD gives meaning to the vanity 
of life. 

That purpose of some kind underlies the super- 
abundant evidence of method in the processes of Nature 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD ETERNAL 385 


ought not to be hard to believe. That this method is 
the work of unconscious reason appears to be an un- 
philosophical explanation, for we can only imagine 
such an agent by reference to a reason which is con- 
scious. Otherwise, the phrase has no more meaning 
than “unreasoning reason” or “ unconscious conscious- 
ness.” But, although where there is reason there is 
purpose, the evidence of reason in nature is in itself 
merely evidence of purpose, not evidence as to what 
that purpose is, still less does it furnish a basis for an 
adequate interpretation of life. From the idea of 
impersonal reason it may be possible to deduce the 
thought of inexorable moral law, of the indefeasible 
sovereignty of truth and right. But no impersonal 
ideal is adequate to the highest capacities of human 
nature, or able to draw out from it its very best. The 
highest morality is not impersonal, but personal in the 
intensest degree. It is set free to act, by the convic- 
tion not merely that GOD is around us as reason, 
immanent in the processes of nature and the laws and 
conscience of mankind, but that he has by one great 
act taken His place in the outward history and inward 
experience of mankind as Love. The highest morality, 
reason, and religion meet together and are satisfied in 
the Kingdom of the Eternal God, in whom Reason and 
Love are one. 

In whatever way, therefore, and to whatever extent, 
the Kingdom of GoD finds its present realisation now 
on earth—and we are here as Christians to realise it 
in as many ways and as fully as it is given us to do,— 
Christian faith and hope, moral faith in GOD, can 
never dispense with the promise of GoOD’s eternal 

25 


386 REGNUM DEI 


Kingdom, can never cease to enthrone it as Christian 
faith and hope have continuously and in all ages en- 
throned it, high above all temporal embodiments of 
the reign of Christ on earth, as the supreme goal 
of endeavour, as the ultimate object of desire and 
prayer. 

We are to work for the Kingdom of GoD in the 
Church and in the world; we may hope that in both 
it is to be realised far more conspicuously, far more in 
correspondence with its reality, than it has ever been in 
the past; but we have no certain knowledge of the 
issue to which GOD’s providence is leading human 
history, or whether the moral government of GOD 
among men is destined some day to be more perfect 
than it is now. We are to seek the Kingdom of God 
within us; but even should GOD give us grace to 
realise it more than we have yet done in our personal 
character, we shall be all the more conscious how 
miserably imperfect it will be even then. Within and 
without, the higher we set our aim, the more earnestly 
we seek the Kingdom of GoD, the more certainly will 
failure mock and humble us; the more certainly must 
we be prepared to witness the frustration of the highest 
hopes we have cherished, the apparent downfall of 
causes with which our most sacred convictions are 
intimately concerned, and to bear the galling shame of 
personal self-reproach. The Passion and the Cross, the 
Dereliction and the cry of death, must enter into our 
individual experience before we can endure with cheerful 
courage, confident in the joy that is set before us. In 
those great facts of redemption Love challenges love, 
and assures us that love is never failure, and that to the 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD ETERNAL 387 


great treasure- house of Gop’s Love no sacrifice is 
entrusted in vain. There is the link, the under- 
lying unity, between the Kingdom for which we are to 
strive on earth and the Kingdom that lies, above and 
independent of our efforts or failures, eternal in the 
heavens. 





INDEX 


A 


Abano, Peter de, 312. 

Abelard, 260. 

Acacius. See Achatius, 

Achatius, confessor, 143. 

Acton, 270n., 332, 344. 

Acts of the Apostles, 47; objections 
to history of, 48 sq. 

Adrian I1., 240. 

Adrian IvV., 264, 277, 323. 

Advent, twofold, 47, 48, 49 sq., 52, 
54, 66. See Christ, Kingdom. 

Aeneas Silvius. See Pius i. 

Agatho (quoted), 232. 

Agilulf, 230. 

Agnes of Tirol, 265. 

Alaric, 206. 

Alberic, Marquess, 241. 

Alberic of Tusculum, 241, 249. 

Albertus Magnus, 279, 296. 

Albigenses, 277, 324. 

Alcuin, 231, 234. 

Alexander of Hales, 279. 

Alexander I1., 248. 

Alexander III., 252, 259, 264, 266, 
277, 323, 324. 

Alexander VI., 304, 329, 331. 

Alexander VII., 341. 

Alexandrian theology, 152 sqq., 199. 

Allegorism, 155 sq. 

Alogi, 123, 139n. 

Alvaro Pelayo, 322. 

Ambrose, 154, 212, 254. 

Ammia, 142n. 

Amort, 340. 

Amphilochius, 123. 

Annates, 303. 

Anrich, 151 n. 

Anselm. See Alexander 11, 

Anselm, St., 298. 

Antichrist. See Znemzes. 

Antioch (exegesis), 156. 


Antonelli, R., 265, 291. 

Antony, 163. 

Aphraates, 163 n. 

Apocalypse, 156, 170 sqq.; date 
of, 107n.; structure of, 108; 
interpretation, 109 sq. 

Apocalyptic writings, 27 sq., 105; 
Apocalyptic, Jewish and Chris- 
tian, 121 ; Apocalyptic spirit, 134. 

Apollinarius, 153 n., 158. 

Apologists, 106, 130 sq., 152, 154, 
199, 213. 

Apostolic Poverty,319. See Poverty. 

Appeals, 318sq. ; St. Bernard on, 267. 

Aquinas. See Yhomas. 

Aniald, 248. 

Aristotle, 212n., 364n. ; on wealth, 
379; political theory of, ror; 
Politics of, 263, 272, 272 sq., 288, 
290, 291, 308, 309, 314, 325. 

Arnold, 212n., 255, 260-262, 279, 
291, 323 sq., 330; Arnold and 
Francis, 296. 

Arnulf (King), 242. 

Arnulf (of Reims), 244. 

Arundel, 328. 

Athanasius, 123, 158. 

Atys, 136n. 

Augustine, 114, 124, 132, 140, 154, 
161n., 165, 169-225, 228n., 280 
sq-, 291; (chiliasm), 169 sq.; 
metaphysics, 196. 

Augustine, theory of property, 254 ; 
on social life, 207, 362, 380; 
theism, 182 sqq.; doctrine of 
grace, 187-194; ‘‘ Gratia Christi,” 
189; Catholicism and predestin- 
arianism irreconcilable, 193, 202. 

Augustine, change ofmind(chiliasm), 
171 ; change of mind (grace), 188 ; 
change of mind (persecution), 215 ; 
his doctrine of grace, unwelcome, 
193. 

389 


390 


Augustine, influence, 326 sq., 336 
sq-, 348; medieval influence, 
252n.; and medieval theocracy, 
216, 222; Augustine and Gregory 
Vil., 251; Aug. de Czv. and Dante, 
286 sqq., 292; Augustine and St. 
Paul, 205; Aug. and Marsilius, 
316; Aug. and Ritschl, 361 sqq. 
See Church, Kingdom. 

Authority and faith, 311 ; authority 
(Augustine), 217; authority, 
Episcopal, 176 ; authority for 
faith, 175, 185; authority and 
reason, 218; authority and free- 
dom, 282. 

Averroes, 291. 

Avignon, papacy at, 274, 294, 306, 
328. 


B 


Bacon, R., 279. 

Baius, 336, 341. 

Baptism, 205. 

Barbarossa. See Frederick I. 

Barmby, 230n. 

Barnabas, 122n., 125. 

Baronius, 344. 

Basil, 123, 157. 

Basil (Emperor), 240. 

Basilides, 150. 

Beatitudes, 89. 

Becket, 252n. 

Bede, 231 n. 

Beghards and Béguines, 324. 

Bellarmine, 304, 343. 

Benedict, 298. 

Benedict IX., 244 sq. 

Benedict XII., 306. 

Benedictines (French), 296. 

Benedictus, 10, 30. 

Beneficia gratiae, 
See Augustine. 

Benson, 141n., 176n. 

Bentham, 375. 

Berengar, King, 241 sq. 

Bergamo, poet of, 260 sq. nn., 323. 

Bernard, 259n., 260nn., 308. 

Bigg, 153 n. 

Binding and loosing, 66, 76sq., 221, 
371. 

Bologna, 263. 

Bonagrazia, 305. 

Bonaventura, 278n., 279n., 298. 

Boniface, 231, 239. 


192n., 201 n. 








INDEX 


Boniface VIII., 252, 274, 286n., 293. 
Bonifatius, Count, 165. 

Bonwetsch, 136n. 

Brace, 373. 

Bradwardine, 327. 

Briggs, 23 n. 

Bright, 319. 

Brotherhood, Christian, 100, 370- 


373+ 
Bruno of Cluny, 249. 
Bryce, (referred to), 234, 242, 262, 
263, 268, 276, 308. 
Buddhist element in Gnostics, 150. 
Burchard of Wiirzburg, 232 n. 
Butler, 204, 340, 368 sq. 
Butler, A. J., 287, 295. 
Byzantinism, 226. 


G 
Cadalous, 248. 
Cahors, 303. 
Caius. See Gazzs. 


Calixtus I1., 258n. 

Callistus, 136 n. 

Calvin, 355. 

Camaldoli, order of, 249, 331. 

Canon of Scripture, 40; of New 
Testament,, 122. 

Canon law, early collections, 235 n. ; 
Canon law, earlier and later, 237 ; 
Canon law, codified, 293. 

Canossa, 256, 257, 258 sq. 

Caramuel, 341. 

Cardinals, origin of, 247. 

Casini, 339. 

Cassian, 162, 164n., 165, 203. 

Casulanus, 174n. 

Cataphrygians, 135 sq. 

Catechism, Roman, 336. 

Catholic Epistles, 103 sq. 

Catholicism, Liberal, 255, 347. 

Catullus, Atys, 136n. 

Celestine I., 192. 

Celestine v., 270n. 

Centralisation, evils of, 267, 348. 

Cerinthus, 126 sq., 129. 

Cesena, 301, 304, 305, 311. 

Chaeremon, 162n. 

Charles, R. H. (referred to), 17, 20, 
21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 43, 45, 
47, 52Sq-, 545 65, 66, 71-74; 88, 
92 sq., 107, 113, 121, 126, 128, 
129, 


INDEX 301 


Charles the Great, 231, 233-235, 
239; break-up of his empire, 
235, 239, 242. 

Charles of Anjou, 269 sq., 294. 

Charles the Bald, 240. 

Charles the Fat, 242. 

Charles Martel, 231. 

Charles Iv., 306. 

Cheetham, 233 n. 

Chiliasm, 119, 124 sqq., 298 ; tenets, 
129; how far general at first, 120 
sq.; (Augustine), 169 ; attitude of 
Origen, 156 n.;(Montanists), 138 ; 
discredited by Montanism, 147 ; 
Chiliasm and curialism, 317, 
366 ; Chiliasm hostile to Church 
order, 134, 141; discredited by 
theology, 157; latent truth in, 
135; vitality, 129-133, 366; 
vitality in West, 161; why not 
permanent, 133, 135, 141. See 
Realism. 

Chilperic, 232. 

Christ, ipsissima verba of, 61 n. ; 
Christ, synoptic and Johannine, 
92; Christ, poverty of, 290, 
296, 299 sqq., 319 (see Poverty, 
Arnold); Christ, return of, im- 
minent, 48, 129, 137, 138, 143 
sq. See Eschatology, Kingdom, 
Messiah. 

Christian, citizen, the, 207, 362, 380. 

Christian Empire, 158 sqq.; illusion 
of, 159, 226, 234, 263 sq. 

Christian ethics, 345, 362; problem 


of, 54. 

Christian liberty, 310, 371 sqq., 
are 

Christian religion aboriginal, 198 sq. 

Chrysostom, 124. 

Church, the, 55, 57, 60, 70, 76, 
84 sq., 98-102 ; meaning of word, 
316; Augustine’s devotion to, 
184; Augustinian idea of, 281, 
330, 365, 367, 377; Augustinian 
idea not hierarchical, 177 sqq. ; 
Augustinian idea spiritual, 254 
sq.; extra eccl. nulla salus, 186, 
192, 221. 

Church, the true to assemble at the 
Advent, 126n., 138n.; Roman 
and Greek compared, 226. 

Church, theological conception of, 
174 sqq., 203, 216, 217 sq., 222, 








358; function of, 201, 227, 363; 
theological conception supplanted 
by law, 229, 237, 326. 

Church, moral discipline of, 138, 
145 sq., 198, 339; authority in, 
IOI, 371 ; Church authority, organ 
of, 218 sq.; Church, faith in the, 
186 *sq.; Church, unity of the, 
357 n., 360; in what sense King- 
dom of Gop, 178-180. 

Church, indefectible, 309 ; predestin. 
idea, 326, 355 sqq.; ‘‘ invisible,” 
187, 302, 330; visible or invisible ? 
194, 360; visible and invisible, 
354 Sq. 

Church, does it include all e/ecti? 
197 sq.; the only real Civitas, 
213; communio sanctorum, 195, 
196, 197, 201, 255, 3553; com- 
munio externa, 195, 197, 201; 
spiritual society, 255, 260, 281, 
290, 291, 317, 323; Law of, 
human, 294 (cf. 177), 309. 

Church, institutions of, 100 ; general 
organisation, 159, 219, 330; 
Episcopal constitution, 357 ; con- 
ciliar government of, 309, 328; 
conciliar movement, 357; patri- 
archal theory, 226n.; Gregorian 
idea, 251; feudal government of, 
235 ; lay power in, 320, 322. 

Church in history, 103, 105 ; medi- 
eval, 276 sq.; wealth of, 255, 
260sq.; Church and society, 101, 
105 sq., 362, 374-376; ‘‘ ecclesia 
in imperio,” 213; ‘‘imperium in 
ecclesia,” 214, 333; Church and 
State, 269, 273, 275, 280, 287 sq., 
290 sq., 292, 321 Sq., 344N., 355, 
357 3 party ideals, 333-335 3 posi- 
tion of Anglican, 357. See A7zzg- 
dom, Societas Perfecta, Councils, 
Notes. 

Church (R. W.), 232. 

Cistercians, 260. 

Civitas, meaning of the word, 210, 
212; Czuitas Det, 104, 112, 179, 
206-214, 251, 256, 280; depend- 
ent on ¢. ferrena, 2113; consists 
of the e/ectz, 211 ; Civitas superna, 
179, 181, 217, 213; Civitas ter- 
rena, 208, 210; dependent on 
Civ. Dei, 212. 

Clement (Alexandria), 152. 


227, 239N., 327sq., 338, 3548q-, | Clement of Rome, 122n., 125, 126. 


392 


Clement IIl., 245. 

Clement 111. See Wréert. 

Clement Iv., 269, 270. 

Clement v., 295, 301, 303, 304, 
319, 325. 

Clement VI., 303, 306-308, 311. 

Clement XI., 292, 330. 

Clementines (second century), 149, 
236 n. 

Clergy, morals of, 246-248, 331 


sq. 

Cluny, order of, 241, 249, 269 ; 
ideal of Church reform, 249, 
250. 

Coercive jurisdiction, 315sq., 320. 

Colonna, family of, 241 n. 

‘© Commerce and Christianity,” 378. 

Commodian, 157. 

Conciliar movement, 328sq., 357. 

Conclave, 270n. 

Concordats, 274. 

Confession, compulsory, 267, 338. 

Conrad, King, 242. 

Conradin, 269. 

Conscience, rights of, 320, 347. 

Constance of Aragon, 269. 

Constance of Sicily, 268. 

Constantine, 158-160, 163; Con- 
stantine, donation of, 233, 236n., 
238n., 256, 267n., 291 sq., 308; 
edict of, 140n. 

Constantine Pogonatus, 232 n. 

Constantine (Pope), 240n. 

Scars ue. Latin Empire, 266, 
278. 

Constantius, 160. 

Constitutional government, 314 sqq. 

Contenson, 340, 346. 

Coronation, 233n.; meaning of, 
259, 308. 

Correptio, 198, 201, 339. 

Corruption (St. Paul), 51, 55n. 

Councils, authority of, 309, 319 
sq.; Augustine on, 218; fifteenth 
century, 274; Council of Basel, 
329 ; Clermont, 259; Constance, 
328 ; Constantinople (681), 232 n.; 
Florence, 329; Frankfurt, 234 n.; 
Nicea, 159; Sixth Canon of, 238; 
(Second), 234 ff.; Laodicea, 123 ; 
Lateran (1179), 264; Lateran 
(1215), 267 sq. ; Lyons (1245), 
278; Lyons, 258, 270; Orange 
(Second), 193; Quiercy, 194 n.; 
Sinuessa, 238 n.; Sutri, 245 ; 








INDEX 


Trent, 334, 336 ~. 3 Valence, 
194.n.; Vatican (1870), 230n., 
337 sqq.; Vienne, 301. 

Counter-Reformation, 214, 334sqq. 

Creighton, 313. 

Creighton, C., 332. 

Crescentii, the, 241, 244. 

Crusades, 259, 266, 269; abuse of, 
277, 303; crusade of Barbarossa, 
264. 

Curialism, 273; and chiliasm, 316, 
366. 

Cyprian, 175, 176, 179, 219; 
(forgeries), 238 n. ; on Kingdom 
of Gop, 141 n. 

Cyril of Alexandria, 124 ; (forgeries), 
238 n. 

Cyril of Jerusalem, 123. 


D 


Dalman (referred to), 11, 47, 52, 


58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 72, 75- 
Damasus II., 245. 


. Damiani, 246-248, 250, 331, 367. 


Daniel, 11, 27-30, 44 sq. : 

Dante, 234n., 250, 269, 277, 278, 
286-302, 309, 312, 314, 316, 319, 
325, 326, 330, 369, 371; Dante 
and Franciscans, 302. 

Dark ages, 165, 228, 231 sqq. 

David, 10, 15, 16, 17. 

Davidson, 13n. 

Day of the Lord, 19, 42. 

Death and sin, 55n. 

Decius, 137 n. 

Decretals, 319; Dante on, 293; 
codified, 268 n.; the forged, 235- 
238, 256. See Jsidore, Canon 
Law. 

Defensor Pacis, 313 sqq. 

Denzinger, 341, etc. 

Deposing power of popes, 230n., 
233, 252, 265. See Plenitudo, 
Temporal, 

Diana, 341. 

Avdaxyn. See Teaching. 

Didymus, 124. 

Dill, 206. 

Diodorus, 153 n. 

Dionysius the Areopagite, 124n. 

Dionysius the Great, 123, 156. 

Dispensation of the Spirit, 136, 142, 
298 sq. 


INDEX 393 


Dollinger, 221, 234, 236, 278, 295, 
298 sq., 301 sq., 304, 305, 332, 
339-343 ; Acton on, 344. 

Dominic, 295. 

Dominicans, 238n., 279, 296, 301, 
340; 343- 

Dominium, 300, 304. See Usus. 

Donatists, 170, 176, 194, 212, 213, 
214n., 215, 254, 255, 360. 

Driver, 28, 29 nn. 

Druids, Thomas Aquinas on, 272. 

Dualism, 250 sq.; (Augustine), 210, 
288. 

Duchesne, 234 n. 

Durandus, 278 n. 


E 


Eastern Church, 226. See Schism. 

Ebionites, 149. 

Ecstasy, 144n. 

Edward I., 271. 

Egbert, 231 n. 

Elect, number of irrevocably fixed, 
I9I, 195. See Predestination. 

Eleutherus, 139. 

Elias, brother, 297. 

Empire, Roman, and Christians, 
110; Holy Roman, 242; medieval 
ideal of, 261, 263; weakness of 
medieval, 275 sq., 258. 

Empire and papacy, 294; constitu- 
tion of Otto I., 242 sq.; early 
settlements, 243n.; settlement of 
Henry Ill., 254; concordat of 
Worms, 258 ; (Lateran Council), 
264; (Frederick 11.), 268. See 
Investiture, Gregory Vil., Gregory 
X., Imperial Elections, Plenitudo. 

Empires, founded on robbery, 210. 
See Latrocinium, State. 

Enemies, 26n., 53n., I10, 129; 
(Satanic), 51, 109 sq. 

England, learning in, 231. 

English complaint to Innocent Iv., 
278. 

Enoch, 107 n. 

Epiphanius, 123, 206. 

Episcopal authority, 220. 

Erastianism, 160, 226n., 322. 

Eschatology (Jesus Christ), 69, 71, 
72, 74n.; earliest Hebrew, 18, 
2ace (St. Paul's), 52%.sq.,.59 
Psalms of Sol., 43n.; realistic, 





120 sqq.; tenets, 129. See Seven 
Days, Chiliasm, World to come. 

Eternal Gospel, 298. 

Ethical societies, 373. 

Eugenius Iv., 249, 329. 

Europe, growth of modern, 258, 
265, 271, 275. 

Eusebius, 123, 157, 159. 

Excommunication, 220, 257, 271, 
327, 334. See Bending. 

‘* Excrescences,” 132 sq. 

Exile, Jewish, 27. 


F 


Fabianus, 237. 

Fagnanus, 341. 

Faith, 94; ages of, 131, 286; blind, 
R00. 

Farrar, 155, 299. 

Faustus (of Reii), 203. 

Feudalism, 277; in Church, 243 
253. 

Firmilian, 140. 

Fisher, 233, 234, 242, 263, 265. 

Fleury, 344. 

Folrad, 232 n. 

Formosus, 240. 

Fra Angelico, 296. 

Francis of Assisi, 182, 212n., 295 
sq., 299, 325; and Arnold, 296. 

Franciscan ideal, 300. 

Franciscans, 269n., 279n., 295, 
311, 317, 325; ‘‘spirituals,” 295, 
299. 

Fraticelli, 301 sq., 303, 325. 

Frederick of Austria, 305. 

Frederick I., 242n., 262-265, 279, 
285, 308. 

Frederick 11., 268 sq. 

Friars, 279, 295. 

Fulgentius, 228. 

Fundamental and secondary articles, 
154. See Theology. 

Funk, 268. 


G 


Gaius, 123, 126, 127. 
Gaiseric, 208. 
Galerius, 158. 
Galileo, 347. 
Gallicanism, 271 n. 


| Gasquet, 332. 


394 


Gebhardt, 41 n. 

Gennadius, 161, 228. 

Gerardino, 298. 

Gerbert. See Sz/vester 1, 

Gerhoh, 261, 262 nn. 

German crown, 242, 268, 270, 
285 n.,-305, 306. See Regnum. 
Ghibelline, name of, 265n.; idea, 

325. 

Gierke (referred to), 226, 227, 233, 
252, 268, 272, 285, 289, 290, 293, 
310, 314, 315, 319, 320, 322. 

Gnostics, 130. 

Gnosticism, 149-152, 175. 

Gop, how known to man, 4; idea 
of in O.T., 33 sqq.; love of, 209, 
358, 361, 385-387 ; moral govern- 
ment of, 87, 204, 364; vision of, 
90, 94. See Reason, Nature, 
Kingdom. 

Godet, 52n. 

Godfrey de Bouillon, 259n. 

Golden age of Israel, 12. 

Goldwin, Smith, 35. 

Gonzalez, 342. 

Goodness, non-Christian, 374-376, 
377- 

Gore, 187, 220, 318, 370. 

Gospel, origin of the word, 62. 

Gottschalk, 194n. 

Grace, problem of, 204; pre- 
Augustinian doctrine, 193, 205; 
Augustinian, 336; Gratia Christi, 
359; sacramental, 205. See 
Augustine, Perseverance, Pre- 
destination, Vocatio. 

Greek Fathers, forged extracts, 
238 n. 

Gregorovius, 260 n. 

Gregory, Nazianzen, 123, 157. 

Gregory of Nyssa, 123 sq. 

Gregory I., 228n., 229sq., 231, 
233. 

Gregory II., 231. 

Gregory V., 244. 

Gregory VI., 245, 250. 

Gregory VII., 222, 231, 241, 245, 
246 n., 248-258, 263-266, 271, 
274, 275, 277, 285, 288, 292, 323, 
329, 331, 367, 376; Gregory VII., 
ideal of, 276; his ideal criticised, 
255-257 ; Gregory and Augustine, 
251 sq.; Dictatus Papae, 252n. 

Gregory Ix., 268, 277, 293, 297. 

Gregory X., 258, 270, 277. 








INDEX 


Griitzmacher, 163 n. 

Guelfs, 323, 325; name of, 265 n. ; 
Guelfs and Ghibellines, 277, 287. 

Guido of Milan, 248. 


H 


Hadrian, reign of, 142n. 

Hadrian. See Adrian. 

Hanno of Cologne, 248. 

Harnack, 83, 132 sq., 145, 
194, 228, 318, 328, 332. 

Hatch, 156n., 173n., 254n. 

Hazlitt, 92n. 

Heathen objections, 206 sq. 

Hefele, 344. 

Hegel, 153. 

Henry the Fowler, 242. 

Tlenry I1l., 245 sq., 254. 

Henry Iv., 248, 252n., 253, 265 ; 
(feud with Pope), 254n. 

Henry vi., 268. 

Henry 11. of England, 258. 

Henry 111. of England, 271. 

Henry VIII., 329. 

Heracleon, 151 n. 

Hergenrother, 239n., 240n., 344. 

Heribert of Milan, 247. 

Herlembald, 248. 

Hermas, 122n., 126. 

Hermit ideal, 162 sq. 

Herodians, 32. 

Hierapolis, 142n. 

Hierarchy, form of, 220. See 
Church ( general constitution), etc. 

Hilarius, 193 n. 

Hilary of Poitiers, 154. 

Hilary I., 192. 

Hildebrand. See Gregory vil. 

Himerius, 164n. 

Hinkmar, 77n., 194n., 237, 240. 

Hinschius, 236n. 

Hippolytus, 127n., 136n., 150. 

Historians, great Catholic, 344. 

History, scientific conception of, 
310; falsification of, 236 sqq., 
256. 

Hohenstaufen, 258, 259-269, 294. 

Tlomage of pope to emperor, 235 ; 
of emperor to pope, 259. 

Honorius, I., 231. 

Honorius 11. See Cadalous. 

Hort, 173n. 

Hugh Capet, 244. 


151, 


INDEX 


Hugh of Cluny, 249. 
Hugh of St. Victor, 260 n, 
Hungary, 246 n. 
Hus, 326 sq., 
Tlussites, 324. 


328, 330, 3343 


I 


Idealism, 182-184, 196; in theo- 
logy, 155. ; 

Ideals, conflict of higher, 269, 
subordination of, 281 sq. 

Idea and institution, 82-84, 256. 

Ideas the ultimate realities, 84. 

Ignatius of Antioch, 94, 125, 130, 


149. 

Illingworth, 55 n. 

Imperial elections, 268, 275, 305, 
306, 308. 

Imperium, 285, 289; and _ sacer- 
dotium, 252 n. 

Imperium in Ecclesia, 252 n., 280, 
See Church, Societas Perfecta. 

Incongruities in religion, 132. 

Index, 341. 

India (Abyssinia), 152. 

Individualism, 164, 365, 370, 372 
sq. See Kingdom. 

Inge, 153 n., 155 n. 

Ingeborg, 265. 

Innocent I., 192. 

Innocent Il., 259. 

Innocent III., 222, 252, 265-269, 
271, 274, 275, 277, 329. 

Innocent Iv., 268, 277, 278, 301. 

Innocent VIII., 280n., 331, 332n. 

Innocent XI., 341 sq. 

Inquisition, 267, 270 n., 296, 303, 
312, 324. 

Institutions, power of, 369, 378; 
and ideas, 82-84, 256. 

Intellectus Communis, 312; possi- 
bilis, 289. 

Interdicts, 257, 317. 

Investiture, 243, 253sq., 258. See 
Empire and Papacy, Feudalism. 

Irenaeus, 93 sq., 114, 125, 127 sq., 
130, 135, 139, 142, 149, 174, 366. 

Irvingites, 140 n. 

Isidore, pseudo-, 235, 247 n. 
Decretals. 

Italy and the Empire, 239; claim 
to, 270, 277, 294, 305, 306. 

Ivo, 278 n. 


See 








395 


J 


Jansen, 336, 341. 

Jarrow, 231. 

Jerome, I4I n., 190, 317 sq. 

Jerusalem, seat of Kingdom of Gop, 
42, 46; the new, I12. 

Jesuits, 335, 336, 341 sq., 344. 

Jevons, 151 n. 

Jewish Christianity, 48; factor in 
Apostolic Churches, 121, 

Joachim, 126, 137, 269, 297 sq., 
302, 330. 

John, purpose of Gospel of St., 91 ; 
Gospel of Life, 92. 

John of England, 266. 

John of Jandun, 312. 

John of Luxemburg, 313. 

John of Viktring, 309. 

John I., 233 n. 

John VIll., 226 n., 240. 

John XIl., 241-244. 

John XXII, 301, 303 sqq., 316, 319, 
323, 333. 

Joinville, 271 n. 

Julian, 160. 

Julius 1., 161 n., 218, 

Justice, bond of Society, 212 sq. 

Justin Martyr, 33 n., 114, 126, 
129, 130, 174, 366; (philosopher), 
154 n. 

Justin (Emperor), 233 n. 

Justina, 254. 

Justinian, 230, 232; age of, 140 n. 


K 


Kant, 153, 370. 

Khomiakoff, 226 n. 

Kingdom of Gon, and Kingdom of 
Heaven, 62 sq. ; the Chief Good, 
381; supreme goal of conduct, 
69; diverse interpretations, 119, 
169, 364 sqq.; perfect, 54, 181, 
221; (in what sense), 370. 

Kingdom of Gop, not an O.T. 
expression, II ; rooted in O.T., 
34; lofty conception of in Jere- 
miah, 23; (Jewish), 75, 96; 
Kingdom of Priests, 12, I11; 
Prominence in the Gospels, 9, 
10 ; Synoptic and Johannine, 90 ; 
Parables of, 87 sqq. ; ‘‘Sons of,” 
64 sq. ; a privilege, 63 ; not with 


396 


observation, 65; mysteries of, 
87; difficulty of entering, 67; 
““receiving,” ‘‘ entering,” 65, 9I. 

Kingdom of Gop, within, 162, 364; 
and character, 63, 65-67, 89, 95 
sqq-, 172 sq., 178, 276; includes 
good only, 172; includes the bad, 
in what sense, 173. 

Kingdom of Gop and sin, 66; and 
the ‘‘violent,” 64, 69, 100; and 
** Life,” 68, 85 sq., 92 sqq., 953 
(Augustine), 179 n.; ‘‘ timeless,” 


93 sq. 

Rcosles of Gop in St. Paul, 49 sqq., 
345 ; in Acts of Apostles, 47 ; and 
glory of Gop, 50; and salvation, 
51; and Advent, twofold, 97 
(see Christ) ; eschatology of, 103 
sq., 358, 360, 364; realism, 298 
(see Chzliasm, Realism); chilia- 
stic interpretation doomed, 147 ; 
individualism inadequate, 164 
(see Zrdividualism) ; coming with 
power, 71; present and future, 
50 sqq., 66, 75, 93, 98. 

Kingdom of Gop and Church, 55 
sq-, 70, 75 sq-, 98-102, 135, 
I4I n., 161 sq., 169, I71 sq., 
173 $q., 175, 176-181, 359, 365, 
374; identified with the Church, 
147. See Church, Reign. 

Kingdom of Gop in Augustine, 320, 
321, 379; and Church (Augus- 
tine), 196 sq. ; how identified by 
Augustine with the Church, 203 ; 
Augustine’s language classified, 
179; Augustinian sense, 172, 
173; Augustine and Cyprian, 175, 
179; Augustine and Marsilius, 
316 sq.; legacy of Augustine, 
216, 222. 

“Kingdom ” not of this world, 91 ; 
the Kingdom of Gop and Church 
government, IOI ; as government, 
251 ; as omnipotent Church, 214, 
333 (see Societas Lerfecta); 
medieval embodiment, 275, 280, 
348, 3543 secularisation of idea, 
247: ideal of Gregory VII., 251, 
256, 310; government and right- 
eousness, 281, 368; Kingdom of 
Gop .and human life, 6, 60; 
social, 364; and riches, 67; and 

- the world, 67. See Society, 
World. 





INDEX 


Kingdom of Gop, invisible, 75 sq. ; 
statical and dynamical senses, 
86 ; in process of becoming, 86; 
spiritual, 317 ; kingdom of Christ, 
54 sqq-, 70-73; kingdom of 
Christ and K. of Gop, 73; 
kingdom of Christ distinct, 114, 
173; not temporal, 317; earthly, 
129 ; spiritual on earth, 51, 53; 
to be realised on earth, 161, 174; 
how to be realised, 281 sq., 323, 
393- 

Kingdom of Christ, imperfect, 54, 
68; kingdom or reign? 58 sq., 
76 sq., 86, 98 sqq., 95, 99; reign 
of GoD, 23, 34, 44 sq. ; reign of 
saints in-Christ, 171. See Reign. 

Kingdom of Gop, Jesuit ideal, 344 ; 
Imperialist ideal, 263; Calvin, 

. 356; ethical ideal, 373; in 
Greek Church, 226 n.; Kant, 
370; modern investigation, 358 ; 
monastic, 162-165; reformation, 
354 sq.; Ritschl on, 358 sqq., 
365 ; secular ideal, 3753; Zwing- 
lian, 355, 360; city of Gop, 104 
(see Czuztas); universalism, 72. 
See Universalism. 

Kingsley, 379. 

Knights of St. John, 260. 

Kriiger, 163 n., 234 n. 


L 


Lactantius, 157. 

Ladeuze, 163 n. 

Landulf, 248. 

Larmor, 5 n. 

Latrocinium, state a, 210, 252 n., 
288. See Empire, State. 

Law, new, 149; legalism (Christian), 
145, 146, 345; influence of in 
Church, 229, 293 sq., 344. See 
Church (Law of). 

Learning, extinction of, 231, 232; 
revival (Carolingian), 231. 

Lechfeld, battle of, 243. 

Lecky, 280. 

Lectures, plan of treatment, 7, 8. 

Legnano, 264. 

Lehmkuhl, 293, 341, 343. 

Leo I., 77, 192, 220, 229, 231. 

Leo 11., 23%. 

Leo IIl., 234, 235. 


= 


a 


INDEX 


Leo VIII., 243. 

Leo IX., 245-247, 250. 

Leo XIII., 293, 337- 

Leopold of Austria, 303. 

Lewis of Bavaria, 303, 305, 306, 
308, 313. 

Liberal Catholicism. See Catholicism, 

Liberius, 319. 

Libri Carolini, 234 n. 

Life, future, 382sqq. See Kzugdom. 

Lightfoot, 55, 57, 127, 150, 318, 358. 

Liguori, Alfonso, 238, 341, 343- 

Little, 279 n., 300. 

Lombard League, 264. 

Lombards, 228, 230, 233. 

Loofs, 188 n. 

Lothair 11. (Emperor), 259. 

Lothair 11., 240. 

Louis (St.), 257, 270n., 271, 276. 

Loyola, 339. 

Lucian (Martyr), 153 n. 

Lucius, King, 238 n. 

Lucius III., 324. 

Luke, canticles in St., 39. 

Lupold of Bebenburg, 310. 

Lupus, Christian, 252n., 343. 

Luther, 332, 354 sq.; and Augis- 
tine, 182, 


M 


Mabillon, 340. 

Maccabean crisis, 27, 30, 53n., 90. 

Maccabean monarchy, 30-32, 40. 

Macchiavelli, 321, 331. 

Mahomet, 372. 

Mahometans in Europe, 231, 271. 

Maiolus of Cluny, 249. 

Manfred, 269. 

Manicheans, 324. 

Map, 261, 264, 296. 

Marc, 343. 

Marcellinus, 207. 

Marcellinus (Pope), 238 n. 

Marcellus of Ancyra, 52n. 

Marcion, 149. 

Margaret Maultasch, 313. 

Marozia, 241 n. 

Marriage law, 265 sq. 

Marsilius ab Inghen, 311. 

Marsilius, 300n., 306-323, 326, 
330; and Wycliffe, 326 sq. 

Martin, 271 n. 

Martin I., 231. 

Martin Iv., 270. 











397 


eee St., immaculate conception, 

339. 

Matilda, 257, 259n. 

Matter and spirit, 51, 55n. 

Matthew Paris, 268 n. 

Maurice, 379. 

Maurice (Emperor), 230. 

Maximilla, 136, 137. 

McGiffert, 123. 

Means and ends, 266. 

Medici, Duke C. de, 339. 

Medieval popes, aim of, 280, 

Medina, 343. 

Mendham, 337. 

Messiah, title of, 29n., 43n. 

Messianic hope, heathen rumours of, 
6. 


96. 

Metropolitan bishops, 235. 

Michael, Brother. See Cesena. 

Middle Ages, 275 sq.; earlier, 228. 

Millennium. See Chzliasm, Escha- 
tology. 

Montanists, 123, 125,126 ; doctrines, 
136 ; in persecution, 137 n., 143 n. 

Montanus, 129, 136 sqq., 144n., 
147, 298. 

Moore, 287, 295. 

Morality, double standard, 164. See 
Church. 

Mozley, 91 n., 336, 372. 

Miihldorf, 305. 

Munich, 307, 311. 

Mussato, 311. 

Mysteries (Greek), 151. 


N 


Natalis, Alexander, 304, 344. 

Nature, interpretation of, 84, 85. 

Naturalism, 204. 

Nepos, 156. 

Newman, 82, 252 n. 

Nicolas I., 237-239, 240. 

Nicolas 11., 247, 248, 250n. 

Nicolas I11I., 300, 304. 

Nicolas v. See Raimalucci. 

Nirvana, 150n. 

Normans in S. Italy, 246 sq., 266. 

Notes of Church, 175; catholicity, 
176; holiness, 138, 141, 143, 
145 sq., 164, 330, 356, 360; 
unity, 176, 357n., 360; Word 
and Sacraments, 355 sq. 

Novatian, schism of, 175, 194, 360. 


398 


O 


Ockham, 305-312 ; asceticism, 307 ; 
Dialogus, 308 sqq.; philosophy, 
311; and Wycliffe, 327. 

Octavian. See John xi. 

Odilo of Cluny, 249. 

Odo of Cluny, 249. 

Old Testament idea of God, 33 
Sqq- 

Oliva, 305. 

Oman, 232n. 

Ophites, 150. 

Opinion, public, 267. 

Optatus, 176, 213. 

Onigen;o123,.. 125.4 180; Usies2, 
coche 226; and Augustine, 
181. 

Orosius, 208. 

Otherworldliness, 67, 69, 381 sq. 

Otto of Freisingen, 308. 

Otto I., 239, 249, 242. 

Otto II., 249. 

Otto Ill., 239, 244. 

Otto Iv., 266, 270. 

Oxford, provisions of, 271. 


1 


Pachomius, 144n., 163. 

Paget, 288, 291. 

Pagi, 252 n. 

Palmieri, 293, 345. 

Pantaenus, 152. 

Papacy: papal system, 160 sq. ; 
(Augustine), 219, 227 ; early Middle 
Ages, 239 ; post-Carolingian, 240 ; 
deterioration ofaim, 257, 266, 269 ; 
use of forgery, 238; taxation, 271, 
278, 303; territorial lust, 257; 
avarice, 277 sq., 303; usury, 278 ; 
simony, 245, 331 (see Szmony) ; 
degradation of, 240 sqq.; revival 
of, 245; Gregory VII., 250; revival 

. in fifteenth century, 274. 

Papacy, Dante’s reverence for, 287 ; 
medieval criticisms of, 318 sq. 
(see Dante, Ockham, Marsilius) ; 
need of, 227, 244, 276 sq., 282; 
estimate of medieval, 256, 276, 
280, 282, 348, 368 ; disintegrating 
influence of, 267, 279, 333. See 
Gregory Vul., Kingdom. 


Papacy, curialist theory, 275 ; 





INDEX 


absolutism, 251; claim over 
empire, 305; infallibility, 252, 
304, 309 sq. See Empire. 

Papacy and constitutions, 273, 3473 
and popular government, 262, 
266, 271, 272, 314.sq., 323. See 
Plenitudo. 

Papal elections, 242 sq., 247, 250n., 
264, 270 n., 275. See Lopes, 
Rome. 

Papias, 125-128, 157, 174. 

Parables, $7 sqq. 

Pascal, 341. 

Pastoral Epistles, 105 sq. 

Paterini, 247, 248, 255. 

Pattison, 356. 

Paul, St., and Rome, 106. 

Paul 11., 329. 

Paulinus of Nola, 193. 

Pax terrena, 289sq., 314. 

Peckham, 300. 

Pelagianism, 192. 

Pelagians, 170. 

Pelagius, 161 n., 188, 192, 196, 
204, 205. 

Pepuza, 129, 135, 138. 

Perpetua, 140. 

Persecution, 107, 131 sq., 
143N., 215, 280, 320, 335. 
Perseverance, 191. See Aéect. 

Persia, ancient kings of, 17. 

Pessimism, 382, 384. 

Petavius, 344. 

Peter, St., successors of, 229; Petri 
Privilegium, 77 n.; letter to Pipin, 
233n., 238 n. 

Peter of Aragon, 269. 

Peter. See Damiani. 

Peter of Florence, 249 n. 

Peter Lombard, 260n., 338. 

Pharisees, 30. 

Philaster, 228 n. 

Philip, daughters of, 142n. 

Philip, Emperor, 266. 

Philip 1. (France), 253, 254. 

Philip Augustus, 265 n. 

Philo, 155. 

Philosophy and theology, 153 sq. 
See Theology. 

Philosophy of history, 12, 28, 32sq., 
105, 207 sqq., 225 sq. 

Phocas, 230. 

Phrygia, 135, 138, 139. 

Pipin, 232, 233, 247n.; donation 
of, 233. 


137, 


i a 


ee 


INDEX 


_Pius 1., 241. 

Pius V. 247 n. § 

Pius IX., 227, 335, 337, 343, 344; 
syllabus of, 252n. 

Plato, 150; influence on theology, 
152-156, 184. 

Plenitudo Potestatis, 272, 310, 
322, 337 sq. See Soczetas Per- 

_ fecta, Temporal Power, Deposing 
Power. 

Plymouth Brethren, 325. 

Polanco, 339. 

. Polycarp, 125. 

Pompey, 31, 40, 106. 

Pontianus, 237. 

Pope. See Vecar, Papacy, Rome. 

Popes, martyred, 237n.; medieval, 
ability of, 277; medieval, not 
canonised, 270n.; vassals of 
emperors, 233, 2353 emperor 
vassal ‘of, 235; French ascend- 
ency over, 319. See Avignon. 

Poverty, apostolic, 260 sq., 296, 
299-305. See Arnold, Francis- 
cans. 

Praxeas, 139. 

Praedestinatus, 228 n. 

Predestination, 190 sqq., 196, 200; 
predestined, number of fixed, 191, 
195; and probation, 204. See 
Augustine, Grace, Elect. 

Premonstratensians, 260. 

Priesthood in Kingdom, 12, III. 

Primasius, 161 n. 

Prince, function of, 314-321. 

Priscilla, 136. 

Probabilism, 339-343- 

* Pro Christo et Ecclesia,” 362. 

Proclus, 139. 

Progress and authority, 282, 288. 

Property, theory of, 316; Augus- 
tine’s theory of, 212; Church, 
212, 254. 

Prophecy, Christian, 136, 139 n., 
142. See Joachin, 

Prosper, 193n. 

Prudentius of Troyes, 231 n. 

Prussia. kingdom of, 330. 

Psalm, hundred and tenth, 
112, 

Puritanism, 57, 132, 137, 301 sq., 
324; Montanist, 145, 146. 

Puritans, 194, 360. 

Purpose in life and in existence, 
3-6, 84; in nature, 385. 


104, 








399 
Q 


Quadratus, 142n. 
Quesnel, 221, 341. 


R 


Raban, 194n., 231n. 

Rainalucci, 306, 313. 

Ramsay, 106n. 

Rancé, de, 340. 

Ranke, 337. 

Rashdall, referred to, 229, 260, 
279, 293, 299, 301, 327 sq. 

Ratramn, 231n. 

Ravenna, exarchate, 230. 

Raynaud, 344. 

Realism, Christian instinct of, 121 ; 
causes of early Christian, 130 sqq. 

Reason in nature, 5, 385. 

Reformation, 333 sq., 
354 sq.; eve of, 331. 

Regalia, 258. 

Regicide, 273. 

Regnum, medieval, 270, 285. 
German Crown, Sacerdotium. 

Reign (earthly) of Christ, 53n.; 
duration, 129; mediatorial, 51. 
See Kingdom, Church. 

Remigius of Lyons, 231 n. 

Renaissance, 331. 

Renan, 312. 

Rense, 306, 308. 

Reordinations, 240. 

Resurrection (twofold), 53 sq.; the 
first, 109, 113, 119, 122, 129, 170. 

Reusch, 239n., 339-343. 

Reuter, referred to, 92, 147, I71, 
174, 176, 178, 179, 181, 185, 
188, 189, 192, 193, 195, 196, 
197, 205, 218, 220, 227, 252, 268. 

Revivalism, 143. 

Resch, 39n. 

Richardson, 234n. 

Riehm, 22n. 

Riezler, referred to, 266, 268, 301, 
393, 309, 311, 312 sq. 

Ritschl, 13, 173, 358-362. 

Robert of Naples, 303, 306. 

Robertson Smith, 13 n. 

Robinson, J. Armitage, Igo n. 

Rome, sack of, 206; empire, 
Christian view of, 106 ; republic 
idealised, 273 ; empire idealised, 


347 Sq.5 


See 


400 


287 ; republican traditions, 260, 
262, 325. See Empire. 

Rome, position of pope in, 230, 242, 
262, 265, 323 ; See of (Augustine), 
218; and Constantinople, 229. 

Romwald, 249. 

Roncaglia, Diet of, 263, 264. 

Roskovany, 238 n. 

Rothad, 237. 

Rothe, 363. 

Rudolf of Hapsburg, 258, 270. 

Rule of Faith, 148, 175. 

Russian Church, 226n. 

Ryle and James, 41 nn., 43 nn., 


45 n. 
S 


Sabatier, 297. 

Sacerdos, 220. 

Sacerdotium, 270, 285, 289. See 
Imperium. 

Sallust, appealed to, 207. 

Salmon, 136n. 

Salvian, 208. 

Salzburg, 335. 

Sanday, 5In., 122, 123n. 

Sardica, Canons of, 161, 238. 

Savonarola, 296, 304, 331. 

Saxon Empire, 242. 

Sayce, 17n. 

Schism, 175, 221 ; of Eastand West, 
228, 239, 245, 259, 269, 299; of 
papacy, 274, 328 ; reformation, 348. 

Schmiedel, 52n. 

Scholasticism, 279, 297, 354. 

Schiirer, 72n., 346. 

Scripture, sole authority of, 294, 
309, 319; and tradition, 338. 

Secularism, 362 sq., 375. 

Seeberg, 194n., 228n. 

Seleucid Kingdom, 40, 106. 

“‘Semi- Pelagians,” 189 sq., 192, 
194, 203, 204, 336. 

Serapeum, 163. 

Sergius III., 240sq. 

Seven days of history, 129, 170, 
298n.; six days, 125, 126n. 

Sibyl, 45, 107. 

Sicilies, kingdom of the, 269, 270 n., 
294; Sicilian vespers, 269. See 
Normans. 

Silvester I., 233 n., 236n. 

Silvester I1., 240, 244. 

Silvester III., 245. 





INDEX 


Silvius, Aeneas. See Pezs sr. 

Simony, 245, 246, 254, 261nn., 
267, 278, 302, 331. 

Simplicianus, 190. 

Siricius, 164.n., 236. 

Sixtus IV., 305. 

Sixtus. See Xystus. 

Smedt, de, 274. 

Socialism, Christian, 378 sqq. 

Soctetas Perfecta, Ol, 214, 251, 
254 Sq-, 257, 274, 281, 293n., 
322, 344 n., 346, 371. See 
Church, Kingdom, Flenitudo, 
Temporal Power, Sovereignty. 

Society, moral aim of, 288 sq., 325, 
347; moral bond of, 210-213, 
251; perfect, 164; Augustine on, 
212; social influence of Chris- 
tianity, 207. See Christian 
Citizen, State, Dualism, Civitas. 

Sohm, 159n., 342. 

Solomon, 14, 43 ; psalms of, 40 sqq. 

Sovereignty, 262, 272, 288, 314 sq. 

Spirit, the Holy, 54, 99sq., 136sq., 
143. 

Spiritual (meaning), 316. 

Spirituals. See Franciscans. 

Stanton, 9, 26, 45, 53, 114, 121. 

State, the, 210, 213; moral aim, 
363; and Church, 251 (see 
Church and State) ; modern, 307, 
315Sq-, 321. 

States, growth of modern, 258, 271. 

Stephen I1., 233. 

Stephen I1I., 240n. 

Stephen of Hungary, 246n. 

Stephen, Sir J., 257 n. 

Studium, 285. 

Sulpitius Severus, 123. 

Swete, 174 n. 

Symeon, Junior, 163 n. 

Symeon, Stylites, 163 n. 

Syria, 40. 


sh 
- 
Taborites, 324. 
Tarquini, 292 sq., 313, 335, 345, 
347, 371. 
Tatian, 130. 
“‘ Teaching of twelve Apostles,” 
122n., 126, 142n. 
Teleology, 85. 
Telesphorus, 237. 
Templars, 260. 


INDEX 


Temporal power, 230, 233, 234, 
241, 243, 250, 260, 262, 270sq., 
275, 277, 300, 316; defined, 292. 
See Deposing, Plenitudo, Soctetas 
Perfecta. 

Tertullian, roon., 126, 136n., 138, 
139N., 140, 141, 154n.; Cyprian’s 
Master, 141. 

Thackeray, St. John, 52n. 

Theocratic ideal (Israel), 12, 13. 
See Gregory VII. 

Theodora, 241 n. 

Theodosius I., 226, n., 233n. 

Theology, task of, 84, 130, 153sq.; 


councils, 174 ; twofold type, 130; | 


source of divergence in, 148 ; and 
philosophy, 361; biblical, 358; 
in early Church, 148-158; early 
decay of, 228 ; scholastic, 260. 

Theophylact, 124. 

Thomas Aquinas, 153, 238 n., 279, 
285, 296, 298 ; political doctrines, 
271sq.; and Augustine, 336 sq., 
343; works of, 272; misled by 
forgery, 238 sq., 274; de Regi- 
mine Principum, 271-2743; and 
Marsilius, 314 sq. 

Tillemont, 344. 

Tirol, 335. 

Titius, 61 n. 

Tolomeo da Lucca, 272. 

Tout, 241, 263. 

Transcendentalism, 154, 182, 196. 

Trappe, la, 340. 

Traversari, 331 ; family of, 249. 

Trench, 324. 

Trevelyan, 328. 

Tiibingen, school of, 83, 358. 

Twelfth century, 259 sq.; and 
thirteenth, 275. 

Tyconius, 161 n. 

Tymion, 129, 135. 


U 


Ugolino. See Gregory 1x. 

Unam Sanctam, 274, 287, 319. 
Unigenitus, 221 n. 

Unity, Christian, 348. 

Universal bishop, 229 sq. 
Universalism of N.T., 96, 99; pro- 


phetic, 22 n., 23, 24, 26, 29; | 


Augustine, 183, 198 sq. 
26 





401 


Urban Il., 259. 
Urban Iv., 238n., 270, 271, 272. 
““Usus” and “‘ possessio,” 299 sqq. 


Vv 


Valentinus, 150; Valentinian Aeon 
Ecclesia, 174n. 

** Vicar of Christ,” 100, 267 n. 

Victor, 139. 

Victorines, 260. See Hugh. 

Victorinus (Afer), 154. 

Victorinus (of Petau), 157. 

Vigilius, 230. 

Villani, 290 sq. 

Vincent (of Lerins), 203, 228 n. ; 
Vincentian Canon, 148, 338. 

“*Vocatio non congrua,” 191. 
Grace, Predestination. 

Volusianus, 207. 


See 


WwW 


Waite, 120. 


| Walbert, 246, 249n. 
| Waldenses, 264 n., 3245q., 330. 


Waldes, 324 sq. 

Wearmouth, 231. 

Weber, A., 293. 

Wenrich, 257. 

Westcott, 83n., 122nn., 379. 
Wibert, 257. 

William of Aquitaine, 249. 


| Willibrord, 231. 
| Witte, 287. 


World, the, 361, 363; world to 
come, 44, 53. 

Worms, Concordat of, 258. 

Wycliffe, 326 sqq., 330, 334. 


x 
Xystus I., 237. 
Z 


Zachary (pope), 232, 247 n. 
Zahn, 122, 123, 127, 139. 
Zephyrinus, 136n., 139. 
Zosimus, 192. 

Zwingli, 354sqq. 





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